(More) 2 AM Conversations
by LeighaGreene
Summary: Leverage shorts 500-2000 words, one conversation per episode, all characters, shifting POV. All occur at or around 2AM, because 2AM is a time for honest conversations about difficult topics. Mostly angsty. Sometimes funny. Lots of pre-family feels so far. I'm open to suggestions, but trying to be canon compliant. T for language
1. After the Homecoming Job

**A/N: Sooo… I've gotten like three comments on '2 AM Conversations' saying that people like it and would like me to continue it (though I think all of them were anons, so I'm not sure how they're planning on catching it if I do…) Anyway, I was thinking that one extra conversation between two of the characters taking place after each episode might be fun to write. I have topics in mind already, but I'd be happy to take requests. One-shot series.**

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After 01x02 (The Homecoming Job)

Nate and Sophie Angst/Dramatic Irony/Foreshadowing

Nate's POV

* * *

No sooner did Nate reach his apartment after dropping off the cash at the Veterans' Hospital than his phone rang. It was an unfamiliar number, but he answered it anyway. It could be a client.

The _very_ familiar, sultry voice of Sophie Devereaux addressed him before he had a chance to say hello. "Any particular reason you felt the need to run off in such a hurry?" she asked, all false innocent curiosity.

"No, nothing particular." He answered in a tone he hoped didn't sound as guarded as he always felt, interacting with the grifter one-on-one.

"Well, then, perhaps you'd like to join me for dinner? I know just the spot," she added with a teasing lilt.

He hesitated.

He and Sophie had been dancing around each other, enjoying the thrill of the chase and playing their little game of cat and mouse for almost ten years (with the exception of _that time_ , which didn't bear thinking about). Not once, in all that time, had they sat down, together, alone, to eat a civilized meal. He could safely say that she knew him better than anyone else in the world, including, to his shame, his (ex) wife, and though he certainly didn't know everything about her, he was fairly sure that he knew her better than most. He had chased her across three continents, with a passion he had never felt outside of his work. She had tempted him into this new life of… could he really call it crime? He had had her arrested (twice), she had embarrassed him in front of more foreign law officers than he could count, and on one _extremely_ memorable occasion, they had shot each other. Their entire relationship, if you wanted to call it that (and he wasn't sure he did) was a long flirtation with no intent ever to consummate it.

Sitting down to have a meal together, outside of work, was… would be… could only be seen as… _different_. More? Serious. Perhaps… like a date? Why? What did she mean by this? It was silly, of course, to be wary of a date with Sophie – hadn't they already visited Paris together? Milan? Moscow? He might have been in love with her a little bit (maybe), but then, wasn't everyone? They both knew there was too much history between them now for it to go anywhere. They had _shot each other_ , for God's sake. They were going to be working together, now, on a _regular basis_.

"Nate?"

"Umm, huh? Sorry. Yeah, sure." He could do this. He could. It probably wasn't a date, anyway. After all, they were colleagues, now, and whatever else she may be, Sophie Devereaux was always a professional.

…

It was a very nice dinner, which led into a very nice dessert at a different restaurant, and then very nice drinks at three different bars. They talked about art, mostly (not the safest topic between them, but their greatest mutual interest) but also travelling and mutual acquaintances and all the troublesome details of moving to a new city. Sophie, Nate thought on more than one occasion, could have made a killing as an escort. She somehow managed to make even complaining about the doorman at her new apartment seem charming.

It was nearing last call and their latest hotel bar was nearly empty when a certain seriousness fell over her features, for the first time all evening. "Nate," she said, laying her fingers gently on his wrist, "Are you sure about all this?"

"About all what?" The effects of all the alcohol he had consumed over the evening seemed to hit him at once.

"Leverage," she said after a moment. "This full-time business. It was one thing when you just called us up as you found a job, but… Nate, this is going to be like looking for trouble, you know."

"Isn't that what you do, Sophie?" he asked earnestly.

She smiled impenetrably. "Yes, sometimes. But it's not what you do."

"I chased you, didn't I?"

Another slow, dangerous, meaningless smile. "Yes. You chased all of us. But, well, I suppose the difference is… this time you'd be running with us. And as you so _love_ to remind us, Nathan Ford is _not_ a thief." Her voice grew low at the end, no chance of being overheard, but he looked around anyway, just in case.

"I'm _not_ ," he defended himself.

"But you will be." All the smiles were gone now. "You can't do this, can't live this life full-time, _and_ keep telling yourself it's not you."

"We're helping people, Sophie." To him, that made all the difference. That was why, on principle, he liked Eliot just a little more than Parker or Hardison – regardless of what else he might once have been, the retrieval specialist was just that – a man who specialized in returning things that had been taken (by any means necessary), rather than taking them for himself. It was what Nate had always done: in the seminary, even with _that company_ , he tried to help people, tried to keep the world as fair and honest as he could. Helping people was, if he was perfectly honest, the thing that separated him from his father, his justification for using his talent for manipulation to its fullest extent, the only thing that helped him face himself in the mirror every morning. He might have failed at the most important thing ( _Sam_ ) but he could still make things right, for others if not for himself.

"Oh, Nate." There was… was that _pity_ in her eyes?

" _What?_ " he snapped.

"What good is it to save the world, if you lose yourself along the way?"

Nate almost laughed. "Don't misquote Luke at me," he warned her. "I was almost a Jesuit, once."

"Well, well… another side of Nathan Ford falls into place," she said archly. "But the sentiment still stands. There's no such thing as an honest thief. Mark my words, you're going to tear yourself apart over this."

"What do you want me to do, Sophie? Break up the team? Turn away clients? Turn a blind eye to their suffering, when I know we could make it better?" He knew he was getting loud and angry, but he didn't care. What did it matter if he suffered, if he did bad things, and helped others do bad things, as long as it was for a good reason? He knew, of course, that utilitarian arguments were a slippery slope, but he knew where the line was, and he wouldn't cross it. Besides, he rationalized, wasn't it better that he turn people like Sophie and Parker toward targets who deserved their attention, rather than innocent museum curators and bank managers?

"Just… Just be careful," she answered softly. "None of us would… blame you, if, you know, you decided you really weren't a thief."

"I know what I'm doing!" he hissed, trying to keep his voice down. "Thanks for your concern, but I don't need _you_ of all people telling me how to live with myself."

"Well, so long as you're sure." Her eyes sparkled oddly as she slipped off her stool and out the door.

Nate threw back the rest of his drink, and finished her wine for good measure before he followed, somewhat unsteadily. He was sure. He _was_. He definitely wasn't trying to convince himself that Sophie didn't know him as well as she thought.

Even if she did, and he was doomed from the start, he couldn't bring himself to turn back now.

 _What does it profit a man, should he gain the whole world and in the process, lose or forfeit himself?_

Nothing.

But then, Nate wasn't trying to gain the world _or_ profit.

If he had to trade his damaged soul to help those he could, he would.


	2. After the Two Horse Job

**[These are written and numbered in the order they appear on Wikipedia and Netflix, which I gather is not the same as the DVD set.]**

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After 01x03 (The Two Horse Job)

Nate and Eliot Not sure how to classify this... Friendship? Protectiveness? Beginnings of a family vibe?

Nate's POV

* * *

Two days after the team returned to Los Angeles from Kentucky, about half an hour shy of last call, Eliot Spencer wandered into Nate's mostly-empty local. He looked, Nate thought, like a man on a mission, so it was little surprise when he took the stool next to Nate's and ordered a beer.

It was, perhaps, surprising that he waited until he was nearly finished with his beer to say anything. Nate had time, in the meanwhile, to finish his drink and order another, the last one of the night, he told himself. That too, was nearly gone, when Eliot finally said, "Tell me about James Sterling."

"He's a fucking shameless, self-serving bastard. What about him?" Nate answered, the alcohol numbing his surprise at the fact the hitter, of all people, was the one who chose to ask about Sterling.

It was pretty clear that there was more to Eliot than met the eye. Nate knew hardly anything about his past other than what they had learned in Kentucky, and, of course, the man's reputation as the most effective retrieval specialist currently in the business. His expertise and ability to work with a team (even the Leverage team) spoke of a military background, and possibly less-than-official applications of the skills he learned there (honorably discharged soldiers didn't often become world-class thieves). Nate wouldn't be surprised if he had gone into a PMC after he left whichever branch of the armed forces he was in, doing some time as a mercenary before moving on to his current line of work. The fact that he didn't use guns was intriguing, and Nate didn't know what to make of it. PTSD, maybe? But if so, he was surprisingly functional. No amount of violence on the job or even Parker irritating him between jobs seemed to get to him, not really. Nate suspected it would be a deadly mistake to underestimate the younger man's intelligence or abilities, but he knew he still did not have the full measure of him, because things like this could still take him aback.

"You know him," Eliot observed mildly. "Is he gonna be a problem for us?"

"Yeah," Nate said, thinking aloud. "I know him. We used to be friends. Well, as close as Sterling has to friends. But then he backed Blackpoole and his fucking 'no experimental procedures' policy, and took the promotion they handed him when I left, and hung me out to dry. Bastard." He finished his drink and ordered another.

"And?"

"And what?"

" _And_ is he gonna be a problem? He's good, Nate. I wanna hear you say you're better."

"I am better," Nate insisted. "I always was. He's more stubborn, maybe, but I'm smarter."

"And humble, too," Eliot smirked.

"Hey, I'm just giving you what you asked for."

The younger man smiled at him almost sadly. "I don't believe you." Nate raised a questioning eyebrow. "You really do think you're smarter than him. It's not just 'cause I told you what I wanted to hear. But I'm not sure you're better."

Nate fought to keep his cool. "Oh?"

"Yeah. See, the way I see it, you mighta been smarter than him when you were both workin' for IYS, when you were both at the top of your game, both hunters, but you're not anymore."

"Hey!" Nate started to protest, but Eliot cut him off.

"I'm not makin' any judgements on how you're runnin' the crew, or debatin' whether you're capable or whatever you're thinkin'. Calm your damn self down. This is a legitimate concern. Even if you weren't, well," he nodded at Nate's whisky, "your position, our position, is less secure, now that we're settled. You ain't been doin' this full-time team thing that long, but you gotta see it's the sorta setup where you gotta be six steps ahead, at the top of your game, or you're gonna lose. See, with a base of operations, less mobile, less flexibility, you gotta be on guard all the time. Sterling, or the feds, or whatever millionaire we piss off next, all they have to do is get a hook in one of us, and the whole operation comes down, and we're automatically vulnerable, with people knowin' who we are and what we do, an' even how to find us. Fuckin' offices? That's just askin' to be bombed or somethin'."

Nate had begun to calm down around the time Eliot started talking about defensive strategy, which was when he realized this truly wasn't an attempt to undermine his authority, but… "Bombing the offices? Really?" That just seemed absurd.

"I got enemies, Nate," the younger man said seriously. "You and Sophie got enemies. So does Parker, even if they don't know her face. If it gets out she's workin' with us, they count. We're makin' more every day, an' if you think the millionaires we're rippin' off are any less cutthroat than street thugs, you're wrong. Then there's other thieves who'd try to take us down as competition, because we _are_ the best, and that's just the ones that actually might want to _kill_ us. There's at least as many or more who would gladly see us rotting in prison for the rest of our lives, from the IRS to the FBI. If _any_ of them get a handle on us, they all do. So I'm gonna ask you again: Is James Sterling gonna be a problem?"

Nate considered it again (really, this time). James was a chess player, like Nate himself, and if Nate was honest, he might be a little better than Nate at the game. He was a stubborn bastard who always, always got his man. And so far as Nate was concerned, James lacked any sort of moral compass whatsoever, more concerned with doing his job than doing what was right. But he was, above all, self-serving. He had just profited from the team's actions in a major way, and there was little chance that James would try to take down anyone who was still useful to him. He might try to _use_ them, but Nate was confident that he could spot any such attempt, and turn it to their advantage, or at least a mutually beneficial conclusion, because no matter how good James was at strategy, Nate was, and had always been, better at thinking on his feet. After several minutes he said with finality, "No. James Sterling will not be a problem."

"I hope you're right about that, Nate," Eliot said, slipping off his stool. "Oh, and Nate?"

"Yeah?"

"I want a list."

"A list of what?"

"Anyone who might be." He was gone before Nate could process that request, exchanging a few words and a smile with the bartender as he went.

Nate mulled over their conversation as he walked home that night. _Protectiveness_ , he thought, adding it to his mental file on the retrieval specialist. That was one of the things he had been missing. Whether out of professional interest (covering his own and his partners' backs) or personal (could Eliot Spencer actually care about people?) Eliot took the safety of his team, apparently, far more seriously than Nate had expected. He was certain there was still more to the younger man, but it reassured him, made him feel just a little bit safer, to know that the most dangerous man he knew was looking out for him, even if he didn't know why.


	3. After the Miracle Job

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After 01x04 (The Miracle Job)

Nate and Hardison Angst/Mourning

Alternating POV

 **[I'm… not as pleased with this one as I am with some of the others.]**

* * *

The youngest member of the Leverage team and the eldest sat across the conference table from each other, arguing in circles over, of all things, miracles. Everyone else had long since abandoned the debate for what they considered more interesting pastimes: Sophie to go have nice long bath (a statement that had garnered her a speculative look from Nate and an eye-roll from Eliot); Eliot to… probably a gym somewhere (he didn't say, just shouted that he was leaving); and, well, Alec frankly had no idea where Parker might have gone. She vanished as soon as they got back to the office.

Alec himself was slowly getting drunk between marveling at the fact that people actually had conversations like this outside of internet comment sections and being appalled at the fact that Nate was totally one of those asshole atheists who had no respect for religious folks, despite his former-almost-priest status. Or at least he was doing a damn good impression of one. He wasn't really sure if the older man was faking at this point. He actually seemed kind of pissed. And not in a drunk way.

All appearances to the contrary, Nate had been enjoying himself quite a lot. It was rare that he found anyone willing to debate any aspect of religion with a former Jesuit almost-priest, and less often that he found anyone who would argue for morality while he argued against it. He wasn't quite sure how, but he found himself on the wrong side of this debate, not just playing Devil's Advocate. As soon as he realized that, however, he became distinctly uncomfortable.

"What is your point, again, Hardison?" he asked, tired of covering the same ground over and over.

"Basically, we shouldn't have done it. I still think we shouldn't have done it. That's it! That's the whole _god_ damn point."

"Well, we did. You faked a miracle so well we got the Vatican involved. You should be proud of yourself. Not much to be done about it now," Nate smirked.

"Man, that is _not_ the point. We goin' to hell."

"Paul told everyone it was faked in the end," Nate pointed out with a yawn. "It's not like we did any lasting harm, and we got the mark. Saved the church. It was a win."

"What about they' faith, man? We got all those people all fired up, an' then jus' pulled the rug out from under them. Tha's cold, man. Nana wouldn't like that any more than fakin' the miracle in the firs' place."

Finally, _finally_ , Nate seemed to get it. Or at least he stopped talking and gave Alec a chance to regroup.

Unfortunately for the hacker, the next thing Nate said was a complete shift from what Alec _expected_ , which meant his carefully marshalled arguments about how belief was important, whether you believed in God or science or humanity or whatever, were totally useless.

There was a layer of serious pensiveness he hadn't ever heard before when Nate said, "You know, after the job, Paul said he thought we did pull off a miracle."

"But you said he knew! From the beginning!"

"Not the statue. He did know about that. He said it was a miracle that five thieves saved his church."

"So what, we didn't make a miracle, we _were_ the miracle?" Alec snorted. "Yeah, man, I don't think it counts when your 'miracle' lies an' cheats an' steals an' cons its way into being."

Nate held himself back from agreeing with the younger man. "Yeah, well, you know what they say."

"What's that?"

"The Lord moves in mysterious ways," Nate quoted, but there was a darkness in his eyes and a hint of mockery in his tone that Alec didn't like.

"Why do I get the impression you not impressed with the way the Lord moves, Nate?" The man snorted at his attempt at subtlety, but Alec wasn't about to be put off. "You got some kinda beef with the old man in the sky?"

And whether it was the absurd incongruity of Alec's phrasing or the fact that he had just been getting close to the edge all night, Nate snapped, words falling with sharp, acidic bitterness from his tongue. "My son died, Hardison. Sam _died_. He was nine. He spent the last year of his life sick and in pain. I spent all that year praying that there was something, anything, that would save him, and there was one last chance to help him dangled in front of me and then it was yanked away and he died anyway. If I was still a praying man, I'd pray you never have to watch that – never have to watch a child die, watch him suffer, while you stand by helpless and watch everyone else fail to save your son. Having the rest of my life fall apart after that was nothing in comparison. Even Maggie leaving wasn't… wasn't _anything_. So yes, if I still believed in God, you could say I had 'a beef' with him."

Hardison's eyes were round and far too white in his face when Nate looked up again, but he steeled himself to speak, which might, Nate allowed, have been the bravest thing he'd ever seen the young hacker do. "Geez, man, tell us how you really feel."

Nate chuckled, just a little hysterically. "It's the Problem of Suffering – the Problem of Evil. How can an all-powerful God allow suffering and evil into the world, if He loves us, if He cares about us? And there's answers – of course there's answers. God's testing us. It's part of His plan for us. But the people who give you those answers, they don't see… it's not about us, me, the survivors – the ones tested or shaped by loss, and where we end up.

"It's – It's about Sam. It's about the _kid_ , the _innocent_ kid, who loved to ride his bike and make paper planes and used to come home from school and tell me all the things he learned in art class and begged to go to work with me on take your kid to work day, and hated cabbage and going to Maggie's parents' house and loved elephants and airports and wanted to be a pilot someday – it's about _him_ suffering and _him_ dying. There's no plan, no reason for a kid… a kid like Sam t-to die. To go through that kind of pain." He sniffled and threw back the rest of his drink, pouring another and topping Alec's off.

"I can only conclude," Nate added, trying his damnedest to sound like he wasn't about to break down in front of Hardison, who was, fuck it all, just a kid himself really, compared to Nate and the rest of the team – even Parker was older, and had probably seen more in her life than any twenty-five year old should – he shouldn't have to deal with seeing his boss, his leader, breaking down like this. "I can only conclude," he repeated, getting ahold of himself, dragging the conversation back to the point with a wrench, "that there is no God, or he just doesn't give a _fuck_ about us – humans – people. Because if he did, Sam wouldn't have died. Not like that."

Alec sat, completely stunned, for a long moment, biting his tongue on the reflexive urge to say something glib and cocky to lighten the mood, and again on the empty platitudes ( _he's in a better place now, he wouldn't want you to beat yourself up over his death_ ) that were the next thing to come to mind. Somehow he didn't think that Nate would take either of those tactics very well. He couldn't claim to know the man as well as Sophie, but they had spent a good bit of time together setting up the offices and since then, researching marks, and he knew him well enough for that.

Finally he couldn't stand the awkward silence any longer and blurted, "You know, man… Nate… if – if you ever wanna talk about him… About Sam… You know I'd listen, right?"

Nate stood slowly, feeling every bit of twice his age, and patted the younger man on the shoulder as he made his way toward the door. "Thanks, Alec," he said. "I just – I can't. Not yet. Maybe… someday. But…" he trailed off.

"Yeah," Alec nodded and followed Nate out of the conference room. "Yeah, I get it." He really did. When Pop died, it was months before Nana would talk about him again, even to the kids, and they'd all grown up with him and shared her pain. He couldn't imagine the pain of losing a child, or bringing himself to share that with someone who never knew them, and who, when it came down to it, he hadn't really known all that long himself, either. But still, he had to say it. "Offer's open."

Nate paused by the outer doorway, looked back briefly. The last word of the night was almost too quiet for Alec to catch, but he _thought_ it was, "Sam would have liked you."


	4. After the Bank Shot Job

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After 01x05 (The Bank Shot Job)

Nate and Eliot Humor... in a Hurt/Comfort setting.

Nate's POV

* * *

Nate came to consciousness slowly, first recognizing a steady beeping sound. When he prized open his eyes, he was disoriented by curtains until he realized he was in a hospital bed.

The details of the afternoon's adventures seeped into his thoroughly medicated consciousness as he realized Eliot was sleeping in the guest chair. They had gotten him out… and the ambulance driver was the kidnapped mother… yeah. And then he clearly remembered saying they had to get the money to the Delgado family, and Eliot was being a paramedic, and after that things kind of went blurry.

There was a cup of water on his bedside table. Before he could get his hand halfway to it, the hitter was there, holding it gently to his lips.

"Did you get the money to the Delgados?" he tried to ask, lips and tongue slow to respond, like being ten shots in, but without the alcohol. It came out more like 'D'get m'ny?"

"Yeah, Parker and Hardison got it to Mr. Delgado."

"Y'er sleep," he slurred. Not being able to talk was infuriating. What the hell kind of drugs did they give him, he wondered.

"Just restin' my eyes. Sophie went back to the hotel to fill the others in when you got out of surgery. 'M here as your brother. They'll all be here in the morning. And the anesthetic should be totally worn off by then. Go back to sleep."

"Sur'ry?"

"Bullet went straight through and missed the artery, but hit the scapula and there were bone fragments an' fibers in the wound. Plus you were lyin' on that bank floor for a while. Surgeon went in an' cleaned it out right, saved ya the risk of infection."

"S'like th'think I ne'r bin sho' b'for." Nate's voice sounded petulant even to himself.

Eliot chuckled. "Yeah, yeah, you're much more badass than I thought. But Sophie was worried, and Carl Owens isn't wanted for anything other than bein' a hero, so here we are."

"'Ro?"

"You, ah, might have to deal with a local news crew in the mornin'."

Nate scowled, or at least he thought he did. It was hard to say when he felt this numb all over. The last thing he needed was getting interviewed by some local news anchor in a hospital bed.

Eliot changed the subject. "Saw your scar in the ambulance. Who winged ya the first time?"

"Soph."

"Sophie? She's at the hotel, remember? Or do you mean you want her to deal with the news crews?"

"N'," he grunted, ever more irritated with his inability to speak, though making her deal with any reporters might not be a bad idea. "S'shot me. Oh one. Par's."

"Wait – Sophie? Our Sophie?" Eliot was laughing. "She shot you in Paris?"

"Sh'up," Nate tried to growl. "Got'r back."

Eliot was still highly amused. "Wow, Ford. Exchanging gunshots in Paris. Romantic, man. Well done."

"G'n t'sleep now," Nate muttered, trying to roll over so he didn't have to see the younger man. The movement stopped at his head, his limbs and torso far too heavy to move at the moment.

"Yeah, buddy. You do that." Nate could hear him smirking. Maybe he'd make Eliot deal with the reporters. Yeah, that seemed fair…


	5. After the Stork Job

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After 01x06 (The Stork Job)

Eliot and Hardison [again not sure what to call this. Pre-family emo-fluff?]

Eliot's POV

* * *

"Hey, man," Hardison returned from the restroom and flopped into an uncomfortable plastic airport chair, next to the pillar Eliot had taken to supporting.

"Hardison." Eliot wasn't really in the mood for talking. He hadn't slept for more than half an hour at a time since they arrived in Serbia (and then only when Parker, who was the only one he trusted to be as alert and paranoid as himself, was both present and awake), and he wasn't about to until they were safely back in the US. Too many old enemies here for his tastes, not to mention all the new ones they just made.

Nate and Sophie were passed out on the floor. Nate looked like a bum, and even Sophie looked a bit worse for wear after ten hours of dealing with the World Health Organization.

Parker, he thought, was napping as well, curled up in a chair with her head on her knees and her hands locked around her ankles. But it was hard to tell. She could just be ignoring them and dealing with her own orphan-related issues.

They were all pretending to be travelling alone, but thankfully had all settled at their gate, so he could keep an eye on all of them at once.

"Damn these uncomfortable seats!" the younger man grumbled. "No wi-fi, fucking European outlets, and can't even take a damn nap in a damn chair!"

 _Really?_ Eliot had no sympathy for him. "Go sleep on the floor." He nodded at the older members of their little team, then smirked, imagining Hardison trying to sleep in a chair like Parker.

"'m not gonna sleep on the damn _floor_ ," the hacker said petulantly. "It's _dirty_."

"Then stop whining," Eliot growled back. His patience with the younger man was running very, very short.

The job had not gone well, and so far as Eliot was concerned, Hardison was largely to blame, given that _he_ was the one who convinced Crazy Parker that she could and should save those orphans. Normally Eliot had a healthy amount of respect for the little thief, who was, at least when they were on a job, his favorite team-mate. She might be somewhat literal and completely socially inept, but she could take care of herself better than the rest of them, and after she reconciled herself to a chain of command, she hadn't been anything less than coldly professional, consistently competent when it came to doing her job (which definitely did _not_ include trying to elicit information from a mark), and generally a _predictable_ kind of insane.

Hardison had ruined that, getting their most emotionally unstable team mate emotionally involved, despite her repeated efforts to make the smart, responsible choice and stay out of it. The worst part was Sophie being all encouraging about it. Nate was pissed at first because Parker was endangering herself and the team, but he had a soft spot for kids, and Sophie had prattled on at him about emotional development and progress until he shut up. Eliot had even heard her congratulating Hardison afterward on getting through to the girl.

"Hey, um, Eliot, man," Hardison interrupted the older man's musings. "You okay?"

Eliot raised an eyebrow at him.

"It's just, y'know, you been real quiet since we got those kids out. You, uh, you're not mad at Parker, are you?"

"No, I'm not mad at _Parker_."

"Oh, ah… you sure, man? 'Cos you sound kinda mad."

" _Parker_ wasn't the one who insisted we had to save those kids." Hardison looked baffled, so Eliot elaborated. "Yeah, she ran off to do it herself, but in the beginning, she told you and Nate and all of us that we had to walk away. That was the right call. The smart call. And then _you_ had to go putting crazy ideas in her head about bein' able to save them. _You_ were the one who said we couldn't leave them, and then agreed to do exactly that. What the hell were you thinkin' _man_?"

"I was _thinkin'_ we'd come back, like Nate said!"

"Not that, moron! Why'd you go and make her get emotionally involved in the first place?"

"What? You think those kids deserved to stay in that hell hole?"

Eliot almost laughed at the naivety of that question. "You can't save everyone, Hardison. I _think_ you shouldn't go around givin' Parker crazy ideas, tellin' her we're more than a team an' makin' her wanna play hero!"

"You' just as crazy as she is if you think she wasn't already 'emotionally involved,'" the hacker said with a snort.

"An' she was doin' a damn good job of keepin' a lid on it until you came along!" he growled back.

"She _stabbed_ an _arms dealer_ with a _fork_!"

"Yeah, an' don't think I won't be havin' words with Sophie about that."

"With _Sophie_? What the hell, man? You not gonna hold Parker responsible even for that?"

"Were you listenin' to the same conversation I was? Sophie shoulda just walked her through getting' out of there, let her take his wallet an' run, and instead she pushed her into tryin' to talk to the damn guy! People are her thing, an' she's known Parker as long as I have. She shoulda known better!" Eliot would be having words with Parker, too, but Hardison didn't need to know that.

"Un-friggin-believable, man. You the one who called her twenty pounds of crazy on our first job." There was a note of accusation in Hardison's tone.

"Yeah, I did," Eliot admitted. "Because anyone who's that excited to jump off a damn roof's gotta be missin' a few screws. But she's the best in the goddamn business, an' every other job we've done she pulled off smooth. I can work with crazy as long as she does her damn job, and she can't do that with you whisperin' in her ear putin' crazy ideas in her head."

"Y'know what? Fuck you, man. I was just tryin'a help. 'S not right, goin' aroun' tellin' herself she doesn't care when obviously, she does."

"Stop. Just… stop. She doesn't need you to try an' fix her." As far as Eliot was concerned, Parker's mental health was her own problem, and until Hardison started messing with her head, he'd been convinced that her compartmentalization was good enough to let her deal with it on her own time, and not let the crazy interfere with their work.

"I wasn't –"

"No. You do whatever you want, say whatever you want when you're home and safe and playin' fuckin' video games or whatever, but when you're on a job, you do your job an' let her do hers and don't go playin with her emotions an' makin' a big fuckin' mess for the rest of us t' clean up." _And by us I mean me_ , Eliot added silently. With his luck, he _would_ be the one who got stuck dealing with the crazy thief in a full-on mental breakdown one of these days.

Apparently Hardison had nothing to say to that, because he stalked off down the hallway toward the closed and empty food court. He didn't get very far before their boarding call was announced, first in Romanian, then in English, but he made his point. Eliot didn't bring it back up once they were on the plane – a feat made easier by the fact that they were not seated together – and Hardison, for his part, seemed bent on ignoring the older man until they touched down in London.

The only redeeming aspect of the flight was Parker swapping her ticket with the man seated next to Eliot and whispering in his ear, "Sleep. I'll keep watch."

He did. Crazy or not, he trusted her enough for that. They were, after all, a little more than a team.


	6. After the Wedding Job

(More) 2 AM Conversations

Before the last scene of 01x07 (The Wedding Job)

Sophie and Nate Angst/Romance [that label could probably apply to this whole series. 2 AM is a good time for angst, and honest conversations about painful subjects, and I am a fan of just about all the ships…]

Nate's POV

[edit: forgot that Nate tells Sophie that Maggie didn't know about Blackpoole until way later in this season. Oops]

* * *

A few days after the job with the mob wedding wrapped up, Nate found his local watering hole invaded once again, this time not by Eliot, but by Sophie, who was generally better company, but much more difficult to get rid of, and he wasn't in the mood for talking.

She ordered a vodka tonic and sat next to him, ignoring the go-away air he tried to project, and then deliberately moping until he couldn't help but ask, "Alright, what's wrong, Soph?" At least it was relatively late, and they would be kicked out soon.

"It's silly," she said with a self-depreciating smile. "You're going to laugh at me."

"No, I won't." He was going to get truly and sincerely irritated with her if she didn't give up the woe-is-me act, but he was pretty sure he wouldn't laugh.

She heaved a dramatic sigh. "It's this stupid wedding job. It got me thinking, and, well… I just can't help but wonder if I missed out by never getting married. That's all."

"The great Sophie Devereaux secretly wants to get married?" he asked with all the sarcasm he could muster.

"Don't all little girls? But that's not what I said," the woman in question defended herself. "I just… wonder what it would be like, sometimes. I wasn't always Sophie Devereaux, you know. And there have been offers. It just… it was never right."

"Ever been engaged?" he asked, curious despite himself.

There was real sadness in her eyes with the smile that followed. "Yes. A long time ago. In England. It wouldn't have worked, though. He… never really knew me."

"Never knew the real you, or Sophie?"

She shrugged elegantly. "Neither. He knew Charlotte, one of my first aliases. I meant to use him for his connections, to legitimize the persona, but I got in too deep, and couldn't bring myself to tell him the truth. I convinced myself after that if I couldn't tell a man the truth, I shouldn't marry him. Isn't that silly?" There were tears in her eyes, and Nate suspected that the vodka tonic in her hand wasn't her first drink of the night. He had never seen her weepy before, but he had never seen her drunk, either. "He was sweet. He loved me. I told myself I loved him. But it wasn't real." She shook her head decisively. "It never would have worked."

"Sweetheart scam's not your game?" he asked callously.

She gave him a watery imitation of her usual mischievous grin. "Never was, I'm afraid."

They sat in almost-comfortable silence for a long moment, until Sophie spoke again. "Was it worth it, marrying Maggie?"

Well, that was a hell of a question. If he had never married Maggie, he would never have had Sam – that was his first thought. And, he prayed to a God he'd lost his faith in to forgive him, because he wasn't sure if that would have been better. He wouldn't ever have held his son in his arms, but Sam wouldn't have had to suffer and die. But he tore his mind away from that train of thought, certain that he didn't want to seriously try to balance whether it would be better if his son had never lived, and that that wasn't what Sophie had meant anyway.

"She was my best friend. I loved her. I couldn't imagine loving anyone else when I married her." He left out that he had met Sophie three years later, because he knew she would take that to mean he loved her, and he wasn't sure if he did, or had, or if it was only obsession. "We were happy together. The divorce was hard. I… I think I hurt her more than she hurt me. She – I – I just lost it, when Sam…" Nate took a shuddering breath, redirecting, before he continued. "I withdrew, and I think that hurt her more. She tried to be strong for me, but she couldn't, because she didn't know. And I couldn't be there for her because… I just couldn't. It just… It wasn't working anymore. I think… I _think_ the years we were happy outweigh the misery. But not by much."

Sophie waited an appropriate amount of time before she said, "I wish I could have met her. The woman who won your heart. All those years you spent chasing me, I couldn't help but be a little jealous of her."

Nate resisted the temptation to tell her that Maggie was probably more jealous of Sophie, those years, for exactly the same reason. He had never cheated on Maggie, but she knew that they had… something… something _more_ than the usual investigator-thief relationship. Sophie was probably just fishing, anyway.

"She's not _dead_ , Sophie."

"I _know_ that. But people change. I don't have anything against the woman she is now, but I always wished I could have met the girl you fell in love with."

"You are being weirdly invasive," Nate said, before his brain could catch up with his mouth. Coworkers, even coworkers you had spent the better part of ten years flirting with as you chased them across half the world's major cities, shouldn't tell you that they wanted to meet the girl you fell in love with. That was something he would have expected _Parker_ to come out with, not _Sophie_. (Except it was also very, very Sophie in a strangely covetous, possessive way.) "I mean – that is…" he gave up explaining when he realized she was sniggering.

"I know, I know, it's weird. I just… Back before everything, I had this idea of you in my head, and I only ever saw you in that one mode, you know, on the hunt. But I had this image of you, and what you might be like outside of all that, in, you know, your _normal_ life."

"That was my normal life," Nate pointed out, uncertain as to where this conversation was headed.

"No, shut up," Sophie said lightly. "I had this sort of character Nate that I imagined living a life outside of chasing me across Europe" "And Asia, and North America," he interjected, compelled to interrupt in defiance of her order. "Yes, and Australia, once, do you remember Sydney?" Nate nodded. He couldn't possibly _forget_ Sydney, no matter how much he might want to. (He didn't count it, really, though. Sydney had been a nightmare, all tedious paperwork and third-rate hotels, and he hadn't seen hide nor hair of her the entire three weeks he was poking around. He wasn't entirely sure she was actually in Australia for most of it.) "But hush. The point is, I liked to imagine that you were happy with Maggie and Sam," Nate was fairly certain he made some sort of involuntary noise of pain, remembering the times when he _was_ happy with Maggie and Sam, like a sucker punch on the heels of thinking of Sydney. Sophie ignored it. "And that, well, you got to live the life of happily wedded bliss that I never did."

Now Nate was laughing – something that he had not expected when she walked into the bar, let alone in the last two minutes – something which, if pressed, he wasn't sure he could remember the last time he had done. It started out sarcastic, taunting, ironic – but under her exasperated, half-pained gaze, grew to be more genuine, despite the fact that he knew she was pushing all of his buttons in quick succession (He was forcibly reminded that she _was_ the best at what she did, and she had always been able to play him like a cheap fiddle, but he pushed that thought away.)

"Oh, _Nate_ , you said you wouldn't laugh at me!" she protested, smacking him playfully in the arm with her tiny, useless purse-thing.

"I didn't laugh at you for wanting a white wedding! I'm laughing at you for wanting to be me," he defended himself.

"Ooh, shut it, you," she said, slipping off her barstool. "I never wanted to be you, I just wondered, sometimes, what it might have been like. You know, the road not travelled."

At that, Nate suddenly felt about twice as sober. Oh, yes. He knew all about wondering about the road not taken. He could fill books with the what-ifs of his life.

Apparently cheered by their conversation, or having gotten whatever it was that she wanted out of him (though he had no idea what that might have been, besides cheering up), she sashayed toward the door. He had to stop himself saying, 'Wait! Come back.' It wasn't made easier by her pausing at the last moment to call back to him, "Oh, and Nate – If I ever do get married, I'll wear red!"

He can't help but smile a little as he thinks of Sophie in a brilliant red dress, though in his fantasy, she's not in a church at all. He can't help but think of the red dress she wore the first time he saw her (though it will be days before he realizes it was ten years ago exactly).


	7. After the Mile High Job

(More) 2 AM Conversations

Before the last scene of 01x08 (The Mile High Job)

Parker and Eliot Hurt/Comfort

Parker's POV

* * *

They stayed on the island for a night after the almost-crash landing, partly because there were no flights out that evening, and partly because Nate said it would be less suspicious if they didn't all arrive and leave together.

Parker, for one, was glad for the delay. She was very, very bruised (and covered in little scrapes), had somehow managed to twist an ankle (strained, not sprained), and from what she could see in the mirror, this cut on her shoulder blade could probably use a few stitches. She had no idea what she ran into, getting thrown around the cargo hold in the dark, but it got her good.

In the excitement of the landing, no one had questioned her story of being in the hold to search for an inhaler. She had done her usual vanishing act to go collect a few supplies (clothes and various bandages) before joining the team at the hotel. She had a very hot shower, wrapped and iced her ankle, and checked for a concussion and internal bleeding before taking a nap (she had neither). Unfortunately, she couldn't stitch the shoulder wound herself (even she wasn't _that_ flexible), so she had had to make due with a box of lifted butterfly bandages. What was another scar, after all?

By the time she hauled herself down to dinner, there was no outward sign of her weakened state, cuts and bruises hidden behind long sleeves and her limp concealed from everyone except maybe Eliot. He was preoccupied playing bodyguard for their witness, but she took care to make sure he was ahead of her and unable to see it, just in case.

It was therefore unexpected when Eliot knocked on her door, as well as late – the bedside clock said half-past one.

"Marissa's finally asleep," was his only explanation. Parker vaguely recalled that the witness was supposed to be sharing a room with Sophie, not Eliot, and she was pretty sure that the principle being asleep didn't mean a bodyguard could take a break, but maybe one of the others was babysitting. It didn't matter, anyway. It wasn't her problem. She gave him a one-shouldered shrug and let him come in, knowing well enough by now that he would be more suspicious and worried about her if she tried to keep him out.

"You alright?" he asked gently as the door closed.

"Fine."

"Parker… Don't lie to me." Damn it. She must have spoken too fast again.

"I'm fine. Really." She was. She had already taken care of everything.

"You're tryin' to hide a limp, and you were bleedin' when we got off that damn death trap," he said.

She shook her head. "What do you want, Eliot?"

"Just checkin' up on you."

"I can take care of myself." She always had, as long as she could remember.

"I know that." Oops, Eliot sounded a little angry now. "If I didn't think you could, I'd'a been up here a long time ago. But it's my job to take care of the team, so will you just let me make sure you're not gonna die in the night or have to go to the hospital?"

"I don't have a concussion, no internal bleeding. I'm fine."

"Humor me, Parker?" He crossed his arms, a sure sign that he wasn't going to just give up and leave. She was too tired and sore to argue with the crossed arms.

She let all her frustration out in an _urgh_ , but pulled her long-sleeved shirt off with one hand, shimmying out of her pants almost as quickly and sitting on the bed. "Fine!"

He ran a practiced eye over her bruised torso and limbs before taking her ankle in hand and unwrapping it.

"It's just a strain," she muttered as he manipulated the abused extremity and re-wrapped it, not quite as tight as she would have, but well enough.

"Lie down, stubborn girl," he answered, nodding at the bed.

She sighed. This was always the most awkward part, in her opinion. She had been in the hospital before, after really bad falls, and once after she got hit by a car. They always wanted to poke at her bruises and make sure none of the organs under them were swelling with blood. She made ouch-faces as he palpitated her abdomen, but he ignored them, knowing as well as she did that the surface bruises weren't the real issue, no matter how much they might ache.

"Alright," he said after a few minutes' prodding. "Roll over."

"'m not a dog," she grumbled, but she did as instructed, flopping over so he could see her bandaged shoulder.

"What's this?" he asked, disapproval so clear in his voice that even she caught it.

"Dunno," she said. It should be obvious as soon as he got the tape off that she got cut/stabbed/run into by something sharp and heavy.

"Parker, this needs stitches," he said, poking at the short, deep slice to her trapezius.

Like she didn't know that. "I'd like to see you stitch your own shoulder," she retorted.

"Well, either we're goin' to the hospital, or you're gonna see me stitch yours," he snorted. "Butterfly bandages." When she looked up, he was shaking his head.

"You do it," she said, letting her own head fall back down onto the bed. "I don't wanna get up. Hospital's probly not even open this late, anyway."

"Are you sure? I think they are, and they'd have a local there."

Parker pointed at the five-inch-long scar on the outside of her left leg without looking up. It was a remnant of her first major screw-up, when she was thirteen, and got seen by a homeowner and then chased over a spiked fence by a couple of Dobermans. She'd sewed it herself, with dental floss and an embroidery needle, and half a bottle of rubbing alcohol on it before and after, because she couldn't risk being picked up at the hospital for breaking into that house, and they knew the thief was wounded. It eventually got so infected that she turned herself in to social services to get it fixed. She was pretty damn sure nothing Eliot would do to her could hurt more than that.

He seemed to figure out what she was saying, or at least close enough, without words, because he said, "Fine, wait here," and disappeared with her room key. A few minutes later he was back with gloves and proper suture thread and a curved needle in a little sterile package. He also had a bag of ice wrapped in a towel that he sat on her ankle without a word, and a little bottle of pills that she pushed away when he tried to hand them to her.

"I don't do drugs," she muttered. _Especially_ not painkillers. The good ones were addictive, and the rest weren't worth bothering with.

"Suit yourself."

"Alcohol and iodine in the bathroom," she informed him, and he brought those as well, along with a towel so she wouldn't bleed on the bed, and the gauze and the tape. She sighed. Getting fixed up took so long. Healing was the worst part of the job, way worse than getting hurt in the first place.

"You sure about this?" Eliot asked again, when everything was ready. Stupid question.

"Just do it."

She closed her eyes and bit her lip against the pain as he pulled the butterflies loose and cleaned the wound again. Tears gathered in her eyes, but she didn't make a sound. The stitches themselves didn't hurt too bad after that (she was pretty sure the alcohol and poking around killed all the exposed nerves), though they were much worse than putting the butterflies on in the first place, even with the twisting she'd had to do in front of the mirror. Still, he was quick, and before she knew it, he was taping a new gauze pad over the stitches and telling her things she already knew about limiting her range of movement and keeping the wound clean.

She nodded, and he squeezed her good shoulder, murmuring, "You did good," in his rumbly southern voice before cleaning up and moving toward the door.

Just as he opened it to let himself out, she decided she had to say it, even if it was admitting that she had needed his help. "Hey Eliot?"

"Yeah, darlin'?"

"Thanks."

He smiled then, a little half-sad smile that said he knew exactly what it meant that she said it, but wouldn't hold it against her. "Any time, Parker."


	8. After the Snow Job

(More) 2 AM Conversations

After 01x09 (The Snow Job)

Sophie and Parker

Sophie's POV

* * *

Of all the people Sophie Devereaux expected to see in her living room when she returned home well after midnight, Parker wasn't one of them. In hindsight, of course, it wasn't really surprising that the thief knew where she lived or had the skills to enter her home, but honestly, she had thought she was getting somewhere with teaching the girl common courtesy.

"Parker," she complained, "What _are_ you doing here?"

"Waiting. Obviously," the blonde, previously lying with her head hanging off the couch and her feet on its back, reading a magazine upside-down, righted herself. "But now you're here and I'm talking to you."

"Why?"

"Well, because you said 'Parker, what are you doing here,' and I answered…" Sophie glared at her. She was certain the thief was having her on. It hadn't taken long to realize that the younger woman often played up her lack of situational awareness, amusing herself and irritating the others to no end. She was fairly certain she had picked it up from Eliot, who liked to pretend he couldn't even use a search engine whenever Hardison was in the room. Sure enough, Parker gave it up after a moment of silent scorn. "Oh, why am I waiting?" she asked innocently. "Because you weren't here, and I didn't want Hardison to know I was talking to you."

Sophie suppressed the urge to slap her palm to her forehead. Holding a simple conversation was like pulling teeth with this girl! "What would you have done if I'd been with someone?" she wondered aloud, but waved away the question as rhetorical before the blank-eyed thief could say something incredibly embarrassing to both of them. "Why were you looking for me?" she asked instead, using her most exasperated tone.

"I need to talk to you."

 _Obviously._ "What _about_ , dear?"

"Nate."

"Ugh. _Nate_? What about Nate?" Sophie had just spent the last six hours, give or take a bit, flirting outrageously with pretty men (and pretty women), dancing and drinking with them, and trying to forget about _Nate_.

"I don't like it when he drinks."

"Well, what do you expect me to do about it? Do I look like his keeper?"

"Umm… yes?"

 _Damn it, Parker_ , Eliot's voice muttered in the back of Sophie's mind. "Well, I'm not," she informed the young woman in front of her.

"Well, you should be," Parker said quietly. "He listens to you."

Sophie tried, hard, as she sat down next to the thief, to gather her wits. Explaining Nate and his issues to Parker would be a daunting task even if she were fully sober and had had days to prepare. "Listen," she began, staring at her hands, "It's complicated."

"No," the thief cut her off, surprisingly forcefully. When Sophie looked up, it was as though some other, much stronger woman was staring back at her through Parker's eyes. "Eliot was right. Nate's not in control anymore. It doesn't matter that we won. It's still a problem. If he starts giving away money again, I'm out. I… I like being on the team, and you and Hardison and Eliot, but I'm not going to let another drunk lead me around and screw me over and ruin my life. I… just can't do that anymore. I won't."

"I – I'll talk to him," Sophie stuttered, taken aback. That might be, she thought, the most words she had ever heard Parker say at one time. Clearly she was serious about her concern. "I'll… see what I can do. Alright?"

"Just fix it, Sophie," Parker demanded, heading for the door. Her timing, Sophie had to admit, was impeccable, as she added, one hand on the knob, "I don't want to have to leave."

And then she was gone, without a backward glance. _Damn it,_ she cursed the younger woman silently. _Why does he have to be_ my _problem?_


	9. After the 12-Step Job

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After 01x10 (The Twelve-Step Job)

Hardison and Eliot Angst (pre-family emo-fluff)

Alec's POV

* * *

Alec had no idea what time it was. He and Eliot had gotten the short straw – if you could call it that, when the other alternative was listening to Sophie berate Nate about quitting rehab – and so had spent the whole afternoon and evening babysitting the drugged, touchy-feely version of Parker. It was, if he had to put a word to it, kind of surreal. She was passed out now, sleeping deeper than he ever knew she could, with her head on Eliot's lap, and her feet in his while Eliot flicked through the two dozen sports channels on his TV (they couldn't go to Parker's place, because even he didn't know where that was, and Eliot probably lived in a bunker somewhere. Alec hadn't looked into it, because it would be disappointing to him to find out that Eliot lived in a perfectly normal apartment).

"C'mon, man, just _pick something_." Alec wasn't a fan of most physical activities, but he didn't mind watching them. Anything would be an improvement over the constant channel-surfing.

Instead of making a damn choice, Eliot tossed the remote over. Alec barely caught it before it fell on Parker's legs, and jostled her in the process, but she didn't seem to care, muttering something nonsensical and shifting slightly in her sleep. He settled on the first movie he found, some chick flick with, he was sure, a ridiculously sappy ending. It wasn't really his thing, and he half expected Eliot to demand the clicker again and put on something – anything – else, but he was too tired to care. Normal Parker was fun. Parker on happy pills was exhausting.

Apparently Eliot agreed, because he asked a question out of nowhere, something that almost never happened with the taciturn hitter, and it didn't make much sense. "Did you mean it, earlier?"

"Did I mean what?" Alec answered with a yawn.

"You said earlier, when we picked her up, that it was too bad the pills wear off, because you liked this Parker."

"Shut up, man," he tried to deflect. "You gonna wake her up." If Parker woke up and heard Alec and Eliot talking about her, they were probably both dead, no matter what they were saying.

Eliot laughed humorlessly. "Not a chance. I crushed a couple Benadryl in her hot chocolate. She's out for the night."

"Wha – you drugged her? Not cool, man! Not cool."

"Oh, I'm sorry, did you _want_ to be up all night? You do know she _never_ sleeps, right? She spends her nights like, lurkin' around and casin' banks and breakin' into our apartments, and then does those little cat-naps all day. 'Sides, the damage was already done. She's been drugged all week."

"How did you know – wait, did you say breaking into our apartments? Like the whole team?"

Eliot shrugged. "Yeah. I mean, I guess so. It's not like I follow her around to y'all's places. But she's definitely been at mine."

"How do you know?" There was no way she'd been caught. She couldn't sneak up on Eliot, but he couldn't sneak up on her, either.

"Her shampoo has a very distinctive scent."

"Riiiight. You just paranoid, man."

The man in question just rolled his eyes. "Stop avoiding the question. Did you really like bizarro-Parker?"

"Bizarro Parker? Ima tell her you called her that. Girl gonna kill you in you' sleep," Alec grinned. "Naw, though, seriously, man? I dunno. The hugs were nice. And she admitted she missed me… us." The hugs were _more_ than nice. It wasn't really a secret that Alec had a major crush on the little blonde. Everyone but Parker seemed to know it. She was a damn fine woman, and her childish enthusiasm for thieving or cartoons or pancakes or whatever else she was doing was infectious. The little flashes he'd seen of her past, with the orphans especially, showed him there was a depth to her that they hardly ever saw, beyond the awkwardness and shyness. It was nice to see her acting so relatively normal, instead of getting hung up on her trauma and repressing everything, and he felt all warm and fuzzy inside when she said she missed him.

Eliot was scowling. "She'd hate it."

"What?"

"Parker. Our Parker. She'd hate this, this… _Rose_. She gets through the day by keeping everything under control. I know once she was in there, she decided to stay, but that was bizzaro-Parker talkin'… She hates drugs. I've never even seen her drink more than half a beer. It feels like betrayin' her, likin' the less-guarded version," he sighed.

Wait, _what_? Alec had been fully expecting this to be another 'don't try to change Parker' talk, like the one he'd been subjected to that last night in Romania, after the Serbian Orphan Debacle, and it turned out Eliot was worried because _he_ liked this Parker better? "It's not that bad," he replied, sudden awkwardness accompanying his understanding.

"It is. She had me put five stitches in her shoulder without even a damn Tylenol because she doesn't do drugs," Eliot explained morosely.

Oh, maybe they weren't on the same page after all. _Wait_ …"Stitches?! When? You…? Why? What? You're pullin' my leg," Alec finally accused, seeing the older man's smirk.

"Nope. Just forgot you didn't know about that. The plane job." He rolled Parker forward and pulled down the back of her collar far enough for Alec to see a new scar, still raised and pink, with little dots on either side where the stitches had been, before laying her back down.

"You insane." That bore repeating. " _You_ are _insane_. She's crazy, and you're crazy, too. Why didn't you take her to a goddamn hospital?"

"She didn't want to go. Jeez, man, it was just a couple stitches, stop freakin' out. Point is, she hates drugs. Probably grew up with addicts. And she hates not being in control of herself. And she hates bein'… vulnerable. Look, she ever admitted you matter to her before?"

Alec didn't even have to think about it. That was what had made it special. "No."

Eliot nodded like he'd made a point. "Carin' about people… admitting you care about people… that's a weakness. Exploitable. In my world, and in hers, you don't want people to know they got another way to hurt you. _She_ didn't want _us_ to know that. And now we do."

"So? She trusts us."

Eliot made a frustrated noise. "No, that's the point. She _doesn't_ trust us. She trusts us to do our jobs, but… We don't know where she lives. We don't know what she does when she's not with us. We don't know her real name, or any of her friends or contacts outside of the team. We don't know where she grew up, or with who. We don't know why she does hardly anything of what she does. It's nice to know that we matter to her, and I like thinkin' some day she might want us to know that, but right now, she doesn't. Well, the _real_ Parker doesn't. An' it feels like betrayin' her that I do."

Alec was stunned. He knew the older man was more than just a hired muscle. He did. The man was a fantastic chef, for example, and knew absolutely everything there was to know about any kind of gun, fighting style, or government agency Alec could think of off the top of his head, plus untold depths of trivia. But he hadn't known that he could do _this_ , this analyzing-people thing. Maybe it made sense. He was a better grifter than Nate, after all, so he had to be able to read people. But this wasn't just people, it was _Parker_. Even Sophie didn't really get Parker, and he had to admit, if there was anyone on the team he would have expected to understand her, it wasn't Eliot. He didn't know who it was, but… Okay, fine. Maybe he only wished it wasn't Eliot. The man was a stone-cold badass ex-soldier who beat the shit out of hired goons for a living and slept with a different girl every week. It just wasn't fair that he should also be capable of empathizing with even the least emotionally available girl Alec had ever met (whom he also happened to be like, at least halfway in love with).

"Maybe we can just… pretend like this never happened?" he suggested weakly.

"Antidepressants don't cause amnesia, Hardison," Eliot rolled his eyes, and then sighed. "But yeah, if she doesn't want to talk about it, that's probably best. Don't act like this changes anything."

"Does it?" he had to ask.

"Nah. Not right now. She'll probably be embarrassed and not know how to deal with it, so I wouldn't be surprised if she hides for a few days, but… the longer we know and don't hurt her with the information, the more we deserve to know, y'know?"

"So you think she'll trust us eventually?"

"Yeah. Eventually. As long as we don't fuck it up in the meanwhile," Eliot said with a crooked smile and stood up, carefully shifting Parker's head to a sofa pillow. "C'mon, lock the door behind me. I'm gonna get some sleep. You want me to come back in the mornin'?"

"Nah. Nate said it's only 24 hours, so I bet she'll be back to normal by the time she wakes up."

"Alright. Call me if you need me," Eliot instructed. He slipped out and Alec locked the door before tucking a blanket around the drugged thief and retiring to his own room.

Before that, however, he whispered in her ear, "I missed you, too."

It was probably only a coincidence that a smile ghosted over her sleeping face.


	10. After the Juror No 6 Job

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After 01x11 (The Juror #6 Job)

Parker and Sophie [I may have to just give up on giving these genre labels. Parker being Parker?]

Parker's POV

* * *

"Parker?" a lilting British voice called from the hall. "Are you still here?"

"Yes." _Obviously_.

"Why?"

"I was researching… stuff." She had, in fact, been researching normal people stuff. Alice stuff. Because Peggy wanted to have coffee with Alice on Tuesday, which was not very many days away. And no matter what everyone else thought, Parker and Alice were not the same. Alice, Parker was pretty sure, would not have thought Sophie meant _stealing_ coffee instead of a painting, for instance. (Parker was halfway through planning a heist on the coffee shop Peggy suggested when she realized this.) So unless she wanted to go through the utterly humiliating process of admitting that she needed Sophie's help via coms for her coffee thing, she had a lot of research to do. "What are you doing here?"

"I fell asleep on my sofa. Lost track of the time." Parker nodded. Sophie's sofa was very comfy. She often took naps on it herself. "What are you researching?"

"Alice stuff. Do normal people sleep on your sofa?"

"What? Yes, I think it's normal enough to take a nap in the office every now and again – wait…" Parker waited obediently while the clearly-still-tired Sophie tried to put something together. "You sleep on my sofa? In my office?"

"Well, yeah. I don't have a sofa," she pointed out. "Which is kind of silly, actually. I have a plant, and that's not useful at all. I should get a sofa." Hmmm… unless she wanted to _pay for_ a sofa, moving it was going to be a pain. Maybe Eliot would help her steal one. He had a truck, and was also strong enough to help carry it. Oh! Sophie was still talking. Oops. "I wasn't listening," she admitted, cutting the older woman off.

Sophie sighed. "Why were you researching things for your Alice persona? You're not planning a job, are you?"

"Coffee with Peggy." It was almost like a job, but less fun, since there was no apparent point to it, besides making a kind-of friend. Not a real friend, because Peggy didn't know Parker, only Alice, but something like one.

Sophie cocked her head to one side and kind of squinted a little bit, pursing her lips in an expression Parker had become intimately familiar with over the past few months. It meant 'I don't understand you, even though I'm trying really, really hard.' "I don't understand," she said redundantly.

"I know."

"Parker… why are you building up your Alice persona just for coffee with Peggy? You know you can go as yourself if you just remember to answer to the name 'Alice.'"

"No, I really can't."

"Why not?"

Because Parker, whether called Alice or not, didn't know the first thing about not-stealing coffee. "Sophie. What do people do when they get coffee?"

"Well… mostly they just sit and talk about things."

"What kinds of things?"

"Pets… hobbies… work… Oh, okay, I see your problem."

Parker shook her head. It was worse than that. The whole situation was a problem. Before they got to the conversation part, she was actually going to have to _buy_ _coffee_. Like with an order and everything. Because as far as she could tell, normal people didn't just walk up to the Starbucks counter and take whatever happened to be ready at the moment. You couldn't, if you wanted to sit there and talk after without being yelled at. And then they would have to sit at a table and talk, and she had no idea for how long, or what about. She could prepare topics for discussion, make plans for certain probable questions, like what to say when Peggy asked about Alice's job or boyfriend, or if the other woman had a dog she wanted to talk about, but there was always a chance that she would say something completely unexpected. Then there were topics that Parker would have to choose, the hobbies that Sophie had mentioned, and they couldn't be stealing things or planning to steal things or jewelry appraisal or jumping off of buildings, because none of those things were normal people things. Gymnastics might be. Maybe. If she never, ever mentioned any of the useful applications of it, and just talked about the keeping fit part. But Peggy wasn't very fit, and Hardison had said something back when they did the mob wedding about how if someone's fatter than you, you shouldn't point it out (literally, or by looking better in the same dress). So that might be out. And the worst part was there was no _point_ to it, except practicing acting like a normal person, and honestly it was hard to care about that a lot of the time, even though she knew it was good for her.

"You have no idea," she told Sophie. Sophie had probably never had to plan a single conversation ever. She wasn't normal people either, but she was a lot closer than Parker. She was made of little bits and pieces of lots of normal people, that she could mix and match for any occasion. "Alice needs a normal-person hobby."

The internet had suggested everything from reading books and watching movies to walking dogs (she didn't want to invest in a dog just for coffee) to any number of sports (all of which sounded pointless) to singing (which she was bad at) to cooking (which was Eliot's thing). It was not very helpful.

Sophie had been talking again, but she changed what she was saying when Parker spoke. "Honestly, if you would just pay attention… I was saying you could talk about the movies you watch with Hardison, or borrow a book from Nate or Eliot, or what about drawing? You're good at drawing." Parker must have made a face, because Sophie said, "You are. I watched you play Pictionary at rehab. Do you do portraits and still life, too?"

Parker shrugged. "I guess I could."

"Really? Here, draw me," the older woman demanded, passing over a sheet of paper from the printer Parker never used.

Parker obliged her, complaining as she sketched. "But there's nothing to talk about there."

"But… what about light? Color? Line? You could talk about materials, subjects..."

"I don't know any of that stuff. I just draw what I see. Here." It wasn't a very good drawing, a few lines and some hasty shading, but it caught the impression of Sophie's profile in the light and the little twist of her lips and the quirk of an eyebrow… It was, she judged, enough to be recognizable.

"That's… you're infuriating." She didn't sound angry.

"Hey, you asked for it," Parker defended herself, at a loss as to why Sophie would be infuriated because of a sketch she had asked for not a minute ago, and confused about why she would say so when she clearly wasn't angry at all. It didn't seem like something worth lying about.

"No, this is _good_ , Parker. Really good. And it took you, what? Thirty seconds? The infuriating bit is that you don't care, do you? Not even a little."

Parker shrugged, suddenly feeling very exposed, like sneaking across a darkened yard when someone turned on a spotlight. "It's not a big deal. And anyway, I can't talk about it. Movies are good. I'll ask Eliot for a book, too. And a sofa."

She headed for the door, only to pause when Sophie said, "Wait, Parker, it's the middle of the night!"

"But there's only five… four days until Tuesday," she pointed out, correcting for the fact that it was already early Friday. "I need time to actually read the book, and look up anything I don't understand."

"But you can't go barge in to Eliot's house in the middle of the night."

Parker snorted. She didn't _barge in_. She just opened the door. Or a window. She liked to mix it up, depending on if Eliot was awake. That was what Nate called _semantics_ , though, so she let it go. "Sure I can. And it's an apartment. It doesn't have any good places to hide, but it's not hard to get in."

"He's going to kill you," Sophie said, and she actually looked worried.

"He never has before," Parker reassured her. "Even that one time he threw a knife at me, I totally dodged. See you later!"

This time she ignored the "Wait, Parker." If it was anything important, she was sure Sophie would bring it up again eventually.


	11. After the First David Job

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After 01x12 (The First David Job) [actually somewhat into the Second David]

Sophie and Hardison, the failed apology

Alec's POV

[Not really sure why, but these two are absolutely the hardest for me to write.]

* * *

It was about two in the morning when Sophie, wrapped in a silk robe (where did she even _get_ that?) wanders over to Alec's impromptu workstation. They were at the house Alec… _appropriated_ from a bank foreclosures database, the one that used to be MC Hammer's. It's enormous, but it's only been a few months, and he's only gotten about three rooms outfitted for human habitation. Eliot and Parker both vanished into the bowels of the mansion shortly after the work talk ended (Eliot was still pissed at Sophie, and Parker was obviously freaking out about the tension between the team, so Alec understood why they had gone – more than any of the others, those two needed their space), and Nate was in one of the rooms with a bed, presumably sleeping. Sophie should have been in the other – Alec volunteered to take the couch like a gentleman – but it seemed she was no more able to sleep than he.

"What are you working on?" she asked hesitantly.

"Nothin'" He was just going over everything they already know, hoping that he would see some kind of solution he didn't before. But nothing's changed. He just couldn't sleep, and it didn't seem right to try to play Warcraft or some other game with this job hanging over them all unresolved.

"Oh, come on, Hardison… Alec… Don't be like that."

Alec stiffened when he heard her say his first name – she hardly ever has, and _never_ in that voice. That was her _con_ voice, the bitch. "Unless this is an apology, I don't wanna hear it," he snapped.

"Well, I'm afraid we're at an impasse, then," she snapped back, if you could call that particular tone snappish. ( _Sniped_ back, maybe?) "Because it's not an apology."

Alec harrumphed and tried to tune out her voice, staring at the layout of the museum on his screens, but there was a certain penetrating quality to it that made ignoring her impossible, even though he didn't want to hear anything she had to say.

"I don't have anything to apologize _for_. It wasn't _my_ fault the job went south! How would it have changed anything if you knew I had the Second David all along? How?"

"You tried to use us!"

"You all agreed! It was a good plan! And it wasn't about me, it was about Nate's revenge."

"You tryin'a tell me you weren't after the glory of havin' _both_ Davids?"

"We're thieves, Alec! We steal things. It's what we do. And I don't think –"

Alec cut her off, suddenly furious. "We don't steal _from each other_. You don't use your team without tellin' 'em what _exactly_ is goin' on an' what the stakes are!"

"Which part of this are you angry about?" she asked, after making a clear effort to calm herself. "The plan to sell Blackpoole a fake David, which you all agreed to and we worked on _together_? The part where Nate's ex-wife showed up out of the blue, and you and Parker had to steal the First David? Because I certainly didn't plan that! Or the part where I suggested taking advantage of that unexpected situation by _running the original plan_ and selling him a _second_ fake? Which, I might add, would be identical to the first fake. It was _Nate's_ idea to sell him the real one and pull the switch after the sale. We _all_ overreached."

Alec had to think about that for a second, because those were all good points.

"How about the part where you didn't tell us you had _James fucking Sterling_ on your ass over stealing the second one?"

Yeah, that was the part that really pissed him off. It might not have made a difference going in, if they had known. Nate might still have insisted that he was better than Sterling, and they might have made a run at it. But they could have been better prepared. They could have had backup plans if it all went south (which it did). He could have saved the offices, damn it, and had a new base of operations set up halfway across the country!

"I didn't know he was on my trail any more than you did!" she defended herself, though she had the good grace to look embarrassed. "He never got close enough that I found out who was investigating that one. And it was ten years ago. By all rights, he should have given up the investigation when the company paid out."

Un. Freaking. Believable. And yet… it made sense. It really did. A grifter like Sophie would be unable to check up on whether there was anyone on her trail unless they actually got close enough to meet, like she and Nate had done on countless occasions. If Sterling had just talked to the people she conned at the Vatican, he could easily have gotten enough of a description to link it to her other crimes, all without her ever realizing he was closing in.

 _Fuck!_ He didn't want to forgive her yet. He wanted someone to blame for these last three lonely months without so much as a phone call from the rest of them. Nate, at least, he had known was okay – he wasn't truly a wanted man, like the rest of them, so he hadn't had to vanish – but Parker and Eliot? It was like they had never existed. (Sophie, he hadn't tried to track.) It hurt. He thought they were more than teammates. _Friends_. Almost family. But they all just walked away without a word.

Damn her and her logical arguments!

Fine. He might have forgiven her, but he wasn't ready to admit it, yet.

He looked up at the woman, who was still waiting for him to answer her, standing with her arms crossed, looking somewhere between defensive and vulnerable. If she was playing him, he had to admit, it was working.

"Just… just go away, Sophie," he muttered. The grifter, knowing when to push her mark and when to let him relax, gave him a look that he couldn't interpret and nodded once before she did so.


	12. After the Second David Job

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After 01x13 (The Second David Job)

Parker and Hardison Friendship

Parker's POV (via email)

* * *

Parker checked her email one last time before she disappeared, from an airport terminal, though not the one she was flying out of. There was only one message, from Hardison. She opened it, curious as to what he had to say, only one day and ten hours into their game of hide and seek.

 _Dear Parker_ , it read,

 _I don't know if or when you'll read this, but I really hope you do. It's been three hours and counting since you left, and I'm already looking for you. I'm already out of options. You left your phone, and I don't know how you found that GPS tracker in your shoe. You haven't used a credit card or any of the aliases I set up for you. You haven't been spotted by any security cameras, so I don't even know which way you were headed. Give me a clue, girl? I got trackers set up in case you show up in a few days or weeks or months, but I somehow doubt you will._

 _I got to hand it to you, girl, when you vanish, you vanish. Like you were never there to start with._

 _But I wish you hadn't._

 _I wish you just told me where you were going, let me come along for the ride. I liked working with you, and just hanging out between jobs. I like to think of you as a friend, and I'm going to miss you. I already miss you._

 _I feel like an idiot, so you know, writing this. I'm not really expecting an answer, but I wanted you to know that, well… I hope you come back for me, someday._

 _I'll be waiting,_

 _Alec_

It was tempting, _so tempting_ , to go back. She had become accustomed, over the past year, to having the team around, to Alec's games and random knowledge about everything, to Sophie's attempts to understand her and make her into a normal girl, to Eliot's constant irritation and solid backup, to Nate's drinking and fantastical plans she would _never_ come up with on her own.

The three months between starting the two Davids job and finishing it had been… itchy. And not just because she hated to leave a job undone, though that was true. Being with the team was like being with the street kids again (but with less chance they would sell her out, and less jealousy of her awesome thieving skills, and less chance they'd want to steal from her, since the whole Leverage team was already filthy rich). They all kind of adopted each other, making the only foster family she ever really fit in with. Walking away and pretending she didn't care felt _wrong_ , even though she knew it was the right thing to do.

She could go back. She could find Hardison. It wasn't that hard to find people when you needed to, if you knew the right people (and Archie had made sure that she did). She could go get him and take him to Paris to the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower and to the skyscrapers in Dubai, and to steal the Hope Diamond with her, which was, she had decided, the next thing she wanted to do to keep her skills sharp.

But she had a job to do, first. Alex Hunter, a fence she met in a French prison once upon a time, had contacted her through one of the old channels (a friend of a friend, who knew Archie. Parker made sure Archie always knew how to reach her, leaving messages on a burner phone that she replaced every month and made sure even Hardison never found out about, because a girl had to have some secrets), so before she headed off to Australia, she was going down to Argentina to check out a rumor about Nazi gold.

And if she was honest with herself, she knew that Hardison would hate getting dragged around Argentina, and would probably screw up any job she tried to take him on, because he wasn't built for air ducts and had all the grace of a newborn giraffe when she put him in a harness. Eliot she might seriously consider taking with her, but he was headed for the Middle East on a job for somebody called Vance (according to a conversation she wasn't sure he knew she had overheard), and she didn't like sand. She just missed having their voices in her head. It wasn't going to be the same.

She looked at Hardison's email again, almost-hearing his voice saying the words: _I'm not really expecting an answer, but I wanted you to know that, well… I hope you come back for me, someday. I'll be waiting._

She smiled. She could do that. Someday. She didn't know when, but when she was ready to take a break from working, she would go and find him.

She quickly typed a response and clicked _send_ before hurrying to her own terminal and boarding the plane that would take her away. After all, it would just be embarrassing if he found her before she was ready to go back.

On the other side of Los Angeles, an alarm _pinged_ , signaling an incoming email from the only account that mattered. Hardison opened it as quickly as he could, simultaneously starting a trace on the IP address it had been sent from, and smiled as he read the so-very-Parker response:

 _Someday – P_


	13. After the Bean Town Bailout Job

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After 02x01 (The Bean Town Bailout Job)

Parker and Sophie Humor? Mostly humor?

Sophie's POV

* * *

Sophie was just settling into bed with a glass of red wine and a new script to read when a chirpy, unexpected voice came out of nowhere, saying, "Good work, Sophie."

She startled badly, spilling her wine all over her script and her comforter. "Jesus Christ, Parker! Ooh, bloody hell! This is never going to come out! How did you even get in here?"

The blonde thief (who had appeared out of nowhere – seriously, was she hiding in the closet or something? – and sat cross-legged on the end of the bed without invitation) gave her an utterly blank look. Right. She was never going to explain how she got in and out of anywhere. "That's why you shouldn't drink in bed."

"What? You – This is not my fault!"

"You startle too easy."

"I do _not_!"

"You should be more like Eliot. I never sneak up on him," Parker said matter-of-factly.

"Oh, for the love of – You _can't_ sneak up on Eliot. We can't all be ex-Special Forces, CIA, Counter-Terrorism… whatever the hell he is!" The thief flashed her the tiniest of mischievous smiles, and Sophie realized she was being had. "What do you want, Parker?" she groused, fighting her way free of the covers and moving to find new (not wine-soaked) nightclothes.

"Who says I want anything?" the younger woman teased.

"Last time you broke into my flat, it was to tell me to make Nate stop drinking!"

Parker muttered something suspiciously like, "Last time you know about," as Sophie made her way into the bathroom.

She pretended she hadn't heard. She had had her suspicions since the thief told her she broke into Eliot's place on a semi-regular basis, but as far as she could tell, Parker had never stolen or moved anything if and when she did let herself into the LA apartment, so Sophie had considered it a relatively harmless (suspected) behavioral quirk. In any case, it had been at least nine months since the last time she and the thief had had residences in the same city… unless Parker had been checking up on her even before she let it be known that there were tickets reserved for her musical, in which case that was kind of sweet, in a very creepy, Parker-ish way. She returned from the bathroom to see the blonde sniffing at the small amount of wine left in her glass, but otherwise in the exact same position she had been in when Sophie left… sitting cross-legged on the other side of the bed from the nightstand where Sophie had left the glass, clearly pretending not to have moved… except for the wine glass in her hand.

She shook her head, despairing at the thought of ever understanding how the thief's mind worked, and ordered her off the bed so she could strip the linens and their offending wine-stain.

"I really did want to say good work," Parker said suddenly, several minutes later. Sophie had to think back for a moment before she realized that was the answer to the question 'What do you want?'… or at least part of it.

"And?"

"And what?"

"Oh, come on, Parker, it's the middle of the night. You could have said that at any time in the last few days. It can't be the only reason you're here. And anyway, good job with what?"

The younger woman shrugged robotically. "Getting the team back together."

Oh. That. If Sophie was honest with herself (which she hardly ever was), grifting her way around the world just wasn't the same now that Nate wasn't chasing her anymore, even before Leverage. She smiled, pleased with the confirmation that she wasn't the only one who had been bored out of her mind after the team broke up, and (correctly) interpreted the stilted congratulations as a thank-you. "You're welcome. And…?"

"Why do you keep acting? In plays, I mean," the girl asked, in the exact same tone she might have used to ask about the décor or Sophie's choice of costume for a con. It was, however, undoubtedly the real question she was here to ask. "You know you're bad at it," she continued, adding insult to injury.

Sophie gave her a frosty smile. "You oughtn't go around pointing out to people what they're bad at, Parker," she reprimanded. "But in answer to your question, I act because I love the stage and the plays, the audience, and the recognition. Theater is… it's what I always wanted to do."

"But you do it, every day. It's what you _do_. With us. You don't _have_ to be in plays. So why do you?"

Sophie sighed and steeled herself to explain (to a cat burglar, in her bedroom, at half past two, arms full of wine-stained bedclothes – God, her life was absurd, sometimes) that acting and grifting were not really the same job. "It's different, on a stage, with an audience instead of a mark. Acting… the purpose is to entertain, or sometimes to inform, remember I told you about the Histories?" Parker nodded, brows furrowed as though concentrating fiercely. "Grifting always has a goal, a payoff… something you're trying to get the mark to do, yes?"

"Like giving you money," the thief said with another nod.

"Exactly. And the whole point is that they never know you were conning them, at least not until you're two countries and three aliases away, and when they figure it out, they definitely aren't thinking about appreciating your skills. Acting, though… It's all about the audience, making them see you as someone else even though they know exactly what you're doing. It's a little like a game, I suppose, and at the end, they appreciate how well you can fool them."

"I still don't get it."

Sophie couldn't keep the exasperation from her tone. "I don't know how else to explain it, Parker. Acting and grifting are not the same."

"Yes, they are."

"No, Parker, they're really not. I've just told you, they're completely different. I mean, yes, you use some of the same skills, but… Honestly, how do you think they're the same?"

She supposed she should have known better than to ask, but a part of her hoped that Parker would give her a few arguments which she could quickly poke holes in, then remake her bed and go to sleep.

"They both have audiences and marks and things you're trying to get the marks to feel, and parts and lines… it's _exactly_ the same," the thief explained. "Except in a play, the parts and lines are in the script and the audience and the mark are the same people, and you want them to feel happy or sad, and in a grift, the parts are in the con, and you make up your own lines, and you want the mark to trust you or whatever, and the audience is really mostly Nate."

"Mostly Nate?" Sophie repeated, completely thrown by whatever quirk of lateral thinking led Parker to this statement.

"You called him your only fan, back on our very first job. That means he appreciates it, right? So he's the audience, when you're grifting." Parker smiled triumphantly, as though she had just stolen something very expensive.

Sophie could think of nothing to say to, well… any of that, so she opted to change the subject. "What is all this about, anyway?"

"You're really bad at plays, Sophie," Parker said earnestly.

The grifter bit her tongue on an acidic come-back, limiting herself to, "What about it, Parker?"

"Well, I thought if I could figure out why you want to be in plays, I could make you stop."

" _Why_ , Parker?"

The third time must have been the charm, because she finally got a decent explanation. "Because I really don't want to go to another play. Last night was okay, because it was to get the team back together, but Hardison says that plays aren't supposed to be like horror movies, and Eliot says we can't tell you the truth about your acting, but he also says you shouldn't lie to your team. But you keep inviting us, and then you ask what we thought of it, Nate says we have to go to be supportive, and you all get mad when I disappear without answering."

The explanation was delivered in the vaguely cheerful monotone that Parker seemed to consider a normal conversational tone, which made it, somehow, even more difficult for Sophie to stomach. It was true she knew her acting wasn't _brilliant_ , and Parker couldn't really be said to be much of a judge of the arts, but most people had more tact. If there had been a convenient wall nearby, Sophie thought she might have taken the moment to beat her head against it. Instead, she offered the only solution she could see to the problem outlined (which would, coincidentally, save her from any more unintentional yet cutting criticism):

"Parker, I promise never to invite you to another play so long as you agree never to talk to me about my acting again."

"Unless it's to get the team back together. I want to be invited to that."

"Okay, fine, yes. Unless it's to get the team back together. Deal?"

"Deal." Parker nodded and left without another word, her mission apparently accomplished.

Sophie lay in bed thinking, unable to sleep as she considered the implications of the girl's words until well after the sky began to lighten.


	14. After the Tap Out Job

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After 02x02 (The Tap-Out Job)

Nate and Eliot

Eliot's POV

* * *

Nate has this ambling sort of walk he does, when he's about to sit a man down for what he thinks is going to be a difficult talk. It's less purposeful than his usual stride. Not exactly hesitant, but a little… indecisive, maybe. Like a cutter or sheepdog that doesn't quite know yet which direction he needs to go to move his mark in the direction he wants. It's almost as distinctive as Sophie's con voice. That was what gave him away, the night after that fucking MMA match, where it was Eliot's job to get beat halfway to hell and then convincingly fake-kill a man with his bare hands.

He had begged off the CT scan. He had protected his head better than the doctor could have seen from outside the ring, and didn't even have a concussion, though the other guy had gotten a few good licks in. It would be a few hours before any internal bleeding in the abdominal cavity became evident, but Eliot kind of doubted there was any. He'd certainly taken worse beatings, from more men and more weapons, and walked away fine. In any case, he had been exceedingly reluctant to let the doctor – any stranger – look him over in his state of heightened adrenaline, let alone pin him down in a hospital, and after his performance in the ring, no one was about to try to force him to go. He had slunk off to his room for a couple hours to lick his wounds before sneaking out of their motel (filled with discordant televisions and people fucking on the other sides of too-thin walls) to find a quiet place to meditate.

Nate Ford was not an inherently sneaky man, or even a quiet one, if it really came down to it. His meandering about-to-have-a-talk walk was broadcast in the crunch of gravel beneath his feet so loudly that Eliot could identify it twenty yards away.

"What'd'ya want, Nate?" he asked without opening his eyes.

"Came to see if you were alright," Nate answered, kneeling clumsily beside him in the long grass, doubtless slumping into some ridiculous position it would take several seconds to get out of. Nate wasn't a particularly old man – only nine years older than Eliot himself – but he had never been fit or very flexible, and his two years in a bottle and the death of his son had aged him more than he deserved. Sure enough, when he opened his eyes, his nominal boss was sitting flat on his ass, knees bent and feet planted, looking at him too close for Eliot's comfort.

"'M fine."

"Sophie told me what you said, the other day, about fighting and control."

"There a question in there, Nate?"

The older man shrugged. "She's proud of you, you know, getting in the ring for us and taking the hits."

Eliot snorted. The last thing he wanted was the team – Nate or Sophie or any of them, really, telling him how proud they were that – what? He had given up control? He hadn't. Not for a single, goddamn second. Taken a beating for them? It was _his job_ to do all the nasty physical shit that no one else on the team could or would, whether that meant taking a beating or dishing one out (or both). Well, maybe the second-to-last thing: he suspected Hardison might be a little appalled by the sheer violence of the fight, and he sincerely hoped the hacker wasn't going to start acting all afraid of Eliot after seeing blood on his hands up close and personal. Praise, though he hated it, was at least better than the fear he anticipated seeing on the younger man's face.

How fucking sad was it that _Parker_ was the only one of them who managed to strike the best balance of reassurance and space? The thief had showed up at his door while he was cleaning himself up, with stolen fried chicken and beer in hand, verified that he was less injured than he seemed in the ring (by poking at the worst of his bruises and judging his reactions), then vanished without a trace. Eliot found that her non-verbal show of support (odd though it seemed at the time) was much more welcome than… whatever this was supposed to be – Nate playing messenger boy for Sophie? – or Hardison's avoidance of him.

"Nate, if I wanted to have a heart to heart, I wouldn't be sittin' alone, in a field, in the dark," he pointed out as calmly as he could. The older man made a face and smacked at a bug, so Eliot added, "with mosquitoes," for good measure.

Nate looked kind of flummoxed. Eliot had to wonder how he expected this conversation to go. "Well, just so you know, I'm here if you ever do want to talk."

Eliot let his lips form a sardonic twist. Like that would ever happen. Nate was ranked just above Hardison in the list of teammates he could see himself opening up to, and that was only because he tended to be more mature than the hacker, and had more experience with violence and… life. Hardison was last, because Eliot was positive that their youngest member was also the most innocent in almost every way, but seeing as Eliot considered himself the most sane and well-balanced person on the team, he didn't really think any of them were anywhere close to being an ideal sounding-board or any kind of emotional support. The idea of talking to Nate about his own issues, when he wasn't entirely convinced that Nate was done with his downward spiral and actually recovering from the trauma of his son's death, was just absurd.

"I'll keep that in mind."

"You do that," Nate said firmly, and, a full five minutes later, when it apparently finally became clear that Eliot did not want to talk and had nothing more to say, he struggled to his feet and went back inside, leaving Eliot to think about what it meant to come so close to losing control, and silently congratulate himself on not giving in.


	15. After the Order 23 Job

**[Crisdin – glad you like the idea.**

 **Meg – thanks for the poke to keep going, then :) I just found the series last month myself, so this is my 'oh, God, why is there not a Season Six' withdrawal solution. I would write pseudo-episodes, but unfortunately I know nothing about grifting, thieving, hacking or writing a good mystery, so deleted character-development scenes it is. I like P/E, too, mostly because those two seem to have a lot more in common with each other than Parker does with Hardison. It's my second-favorite ship after the OT3.**

 **If either of you (or anyone else) has suggestions for prompts related to specific episodes, I'd be happy to consider them.]**

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(More) 2 AM Conversations

After 02x03 (The Order 23 Job)

Nate and Hardison

Nate's POV

* * *

The worst part about working with thieves, Nate reflected, was that they had no sense of personal boundaries or privacy. Parker, he was certain, was spying on everyone by breaking into their apartments at random. Eliot had taken to cooking in _Nate's_ apartment for the whole team at least twice a week. It was impossible for him to go anywhere without Hardison tracking his every movement, and Sophie made a habit of strolling up to him in public and roping him into whatever con she was pulling on the side to keep her hand in – most often as her husband, _despite_ the fact that she had a boyfriend now. The worst part, though, was that they all insisted that his apartment was their office now, and they _never wanted to leave_ , or at least not all at the same time.

Tonight, Nate felt he had gotten off relatively lightly – Sophie had a rehearsal and Parker and Eliot were off doing… something violent, probably. Eliot was still teaching Parker to fight, to Hardison's dismay. This left only Hardison himself in Nate's living room/Leverage's briefing room, simultaneously playing a first-person shooter and watching an old sci-fi movie on his array of screens.

With nothing better to do for the rest of the evening, Nate settled beside him on the sofa.

"Hey, you want in, man?" Hardison asked, offering him a controller.

Nate took it. "Sure." The younger man re-started the game, this time for two players, giving each of them their own screen. "How do I, uh…?"

"A'ite. Here," he gave Nate a brief run-down on the controls and the goal of the game (apparently to kill each other, and as many of the computer-controlled enemies on each-other's team, in the shortest time possible), and for a good twenty minutes, Nate watched the back of his khaki-clad avatar as it ran around and targeted the others. It was more satisfying than he expected. Hardison won, of course, several times in a row, but eventually he said, "Damn, man, you pretty good."

"Thanks, I do try."

"I'm gonna grab a snack. You want somethin'?"

"Hardison, it's like, two in the morning."

"Sooo, is that a no?"

"Yeah, Hardison. It's a no. Seriously?"

"Seriously, man. Thieves are nocturnal. This is like… lunch."

Nate turned to look at the hacker, now poking around his kitchen, as he said, "That sounds like something Parker would say."

The younger man smirked. "It is, but it's a damn good line, right?"

Nate just rolled his eyes, though he admitted to himself that there might be something to Parker's theory, because despite the fact that Hardison showed no interest in re-starting the game when he returned with a sandwich and the lateness of the hour, Nate felt no inclination to go to bed. Either that, or he was developing some kind of insomnia now that he had stopped drinking. Deciding that there was no point in wasting the hours if he was going to be awake anyway, he began flipping through the preliminary research he had done on a handful of prospective clients. They were starting to gain quite a reputation, and already had more work coming in than they could possibly complete. Deciding which clients to take on was, he thought, the hardest part of his job.

"Seriously, man? You lookin' for new clients already? We _just_ finished a job. Literally _just today._ It's gonna take at least two days for me to cover our tracks an' get ready to start the next one."

"Then why are you sitting around playing video games?" Nate asked without thinking.

"Woah, hold up," Hardison took an offended tone. "I did _not_ just hear you sayin' I ain't entitled to a friggin' night off, after spendin' all day runnin' around dressed like a cop. Do you even know all the shit I do for this team? I work more hours than all y'all. If I wanna take a break, I'm takin' a break!"

In point of fact, Nate did know _what_ Hardison did (or at least some of it), making and reinforcing aliases, destroying connections between burned aliases and the team, scrubbing their faces from camera footage and minimizing their footprint with law enforcement, making the props that were so essential to their cons, moving funds and laundering them through shell corporations and investments, along with hacking the systems of various investigative agencies to ensure that none of them were actively being hunted by law enforcement (along with probably half a dozen other essential operations that Nate couldn't think of off the top of his head). He just had no idea how, and so couldn't really appreciate the man's efforts. He did, however, know that he should not have implied that Hardison ought to work 24/7, so he made a placating gesture and offered a simple, "Sorry, Alec."

"Damn right, you are," Hardison sniffed.

Nate held his tongue through the awkward silence that followed, and eventually the hacker spoke again.

"Listen, man, are you… alright? You been kinda… _intense_ , lately."

Nate was rather taken-aback by this observation. "Of course I am. It's just… we're starting to get a lot more requests from potential clients, and I hate having to turn them away," he admitted.

Apparently, though, this explanation was not enough to placate the younger man. "You sure? 'Cause I'm startin' to feel like… I dunno… Like this last one – it felt like we were crossin' a line, makin' that guy think he was gonna die. I mean, it was pretty cool that we pulled it off, but… It just doesn't sit right, man."

Nate knew what he meant. This one seemed... _deeper_ than most of their other jobs. More personal. Most of the time, they made marks trust them, often made them fear for their investments or other assets, but essentially driving a man to the point of madness, in fear for his life? It was, he had to admit, a heady experience (and that reaction was one he didn't want to think about too closely, because enjoying that degree of control over others was _wrong_ , damnit, and thinking about it would likely warrant at least a few drinks).

"It's no different," he lied, unconvincing even to himself. "It's the same thing we always do, just pushing a different button."

"Yeah, whatever, man," Hardison responded, the scorn in his tone strongly implying that Nate was some kind of hypocrite for refusing to face the reality of his actions (unless that was just what Nate heard).

Nate didn't try to justify himself. He just went back to his potential clients, telling himself it was worth it, to get justice for them.


	16. After the Fairy Godparents Job

**[Meg – I think I can accommodate those requests, at the very least in a pre-relationship context :D (I kind of feel like Parker, and maybe Eliot too, would be too mistrustful to get into a meaningful relationship with anyone for the first couple seasons.)]**

(More) 2 AM Conversations

After 02x04 (The Fairy Godparents Job)

Sophie and Eliot

Eliot's POV

* * *

It was late when Eliot wandered into the bar, looking to see if there were any likely girls waiting for last call. He wasn't particularly invested in finding someone to take home for the night, but it would have been a nice ending to the day, if anyone was offering. They weren't, unless he wanted to take a shot at the bartender, and she was a little young for his tastes. The only other woman in the bar, in fact, was Sophie, drinking alone in a corner and looking more miserable than Eliot had ever seen her.

And possibly more genuine.

Eliot didn't really _like_ Sophie, even before she had tried to con them into taking the David without telling them all the relevant details – he didn't care what she said, knowing that she had stolen the second one years before _was_ a relevant detail. They might share a certain camaraderie as teammates, but they weren't friends, and he didn't think they ever would be. He trusted her to do her job, but he had a sense of honor that was predicated on straightforward interactions and keeping one's word, and by that measure, she was a dishonorable woman. That mattered. She reminded him, in all the worst ways, of his handlers with the CIA, all lies and facades and manipulation that you knew was there but couldn't see to stop it. He hated that, and even though he knew that she had learned her lesson about trying to con the team, that didn't mean that she had stopped trying to nudge them all one way or another. He had come to see that it was second-nature to the woman, telling them all what they wanted to hear and easing their interactions. He could even appreciate that her management was helpful, maybe necessary, for the team to function, but he would never like it.

All of which made it interesting to see the consummate actress, sitting alone in a corner, drinking and looking dejected, even though there was no one there to see it. There was only one explanation: this was not for a con. She was genuinely upset and off guard, for the first time Eliot had ever seen.

He grabbed a beer from Cora and went to see why.

"Hey, Soph."

She was slow to look up when he sat in her booth, and the usual spark was missing from her voice as she said, "Oh, hello, Eliot."

She didn't even bother trying to pull together a mask for him. He stared, astonished, for nearly half a minute before he just came out and asked: "What's wrong with you?"

That gained him the quirk of a half-smile, which vanished almost at once. "Johnathan and Catherine broke up on the day we started this last job." Eliot didn't know either of those names, but it didn't sound like Sophie was talking about strangers. He raised an eyebrow. "Apparently there was a mask between us. He didn't feel he really knew me." _Ah, that would make Jonathan the art professor._

"Wasn't there?" he pointed out.

Somewhat to his surprise, the always-collected grifter choked a little on her response. "I – no. There wasn't. Catherine's not my real name, of course, and I didn't tell him about the team, but… all the important things were true."

"What we do is a pretty important thing." Any version of Sophie that left out the fact that she was a grifter was bound to be insubstantial, no matter what other details she offered up.

She just shook her head. "I told him about my real parents. My real university. We talked about art and acting and travelling… all of that was true. I really was trying, Eliot. I could have made up some girl for him, but this… that relationship was supposed to be for me. The real me." She fell silent for a long moment. "Perhaps… perhaps there's just not enough of that girl left, anymore," she said at last, taking a long drink. "Perhaps she really is dead and gone, and there's nothing left but masks."

"Sophie…" Eliot trailed off, not certain what to say to that, seeing as it was not an inaccurate assessment of his own view of her.

She sniffed. "And then Nate had to go and say that maybe it would be a good thing if I stopped being Sophie Devereaux, the cad."

"When did he say that?"

"Oh, hours ago. It was something about how the whole con depended on my telling the truth, and maybe I should do it more often, and I tried to laugh it off, pointed out that Sophie Devereaux is a lie, and he said maybe it would be a good thing, if I stopped being her." She stopped, taking a quick breath to compose herself, then tried to change the subject. "He was wrong, anyway. Getting Widmark out there onstage, that, yes… but the con was done, by then. We already had Fowler out of the way."

Eliot wasn't inclined to let her. He told himself that they didn't need their grifter falling apart on them, or at odds with their mastermind, but in truth, he didn't care to watch her suffer, regardless of whether or not he actually liked her (and he couldn't deny that seeing that she did have some genuine feelings made him like her a bit more). He hid a grimace and bit the bullet. "You know he didn't mean it like that. I think he wishes you'd tell _him_ about your parents and university and all that, but Nate wouldn't ever want you to be anything but yourself."

The silence that greeted his stab at being comforting was terrifying, as were the lost, haunted eyes she turned on him when she said, "That's just the problem, Eliot. I don't know who that is, anymore."

She left before he could come up with an adequate response, and the next time he saw her, the mask of Sophie Devereaux was firmly back in place.


	17. After the Three Days of the Hunter Job

**[Queen Peacock – Thanks! She might be my favorite character, so I'm glad it seems like she's on-point.]**

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After 02x05 (The Three Days of the Hunter Job)

Parker and Hardison

Alternating POV

* * *

Alec Hardison likes to think he's a brave person. Maybe not compared to Eliot, but it's his job to fight bad guys with guns, and maybe not compared to Parker, but he's not entirely sure that girl is even capable of feeling fear sometimes. Compared to, like, Nate, though, or Sophie, or like, _normal people_ , he's pretty brave. At least an average level of badass. He doesn't freak out about spiders or snakes or jump scares in horror movies or germs or the fact that he knows exactly how many people want him and his closest friends dead, and when he's on the con, he's got nerves of steel. He's been held at gunpoint before and never pissed himself, which he thinks should count for something, at least.

All of that is to say it wasn't good for his ego when Parker broke into his apartment in the middle of a raid, snuck up behind him and said, "I know you lied to me, Hardison," because he just about shit himself (and totally got killed while he was distracted). She spun his desk chair around to glare at him more effectively, hands on her hips, and that look that Eliot labeled 'crazy eyes' combined with the most ferocious scowl Alec had ever seen her wear. "Tell me why," she demanded, and, well, he wasn't about to say no to the crazy eyes. Girl was terrifying!

Hardison's apartment, the whole top floor of a swanky building downtown, was the least like Parker's place of any of the team's residences. The closest she could compare it to was Sophie's, but that wasn't saying much at all, because they both had lots of probably useless stuff around, but Sophie's all looked sophisticated, like the houses Parker used to rob, and Hardison's just looked cluttered, despite the fact that he had about twice as much space as she did. Parker figured that meant he had about four times as much junk. Most of the time when she broke in, she practiced memory games, moving things back to the place they were in the time before, or just fiddled around with them trying to figure out what they were for, but she didn't have time for that tonight. Or rather, she did have time, but if she wanted to get answers, she needed to surprise Hardison, and that wouldn't happen if she spent half an hour re-arranging the books and dolls on the shelves and playing with various electronic gadgets.

Or maybe it could have. She wasn't even trying to be quiet, and he still jumped about a foot when she spoke to him. She put on her best 'don't fuck with me' face before she spun his chair around. She thought he and Eliot liked her, but either they spent this whole job lying to her, or Sophie had, when Parker was telling her about Bigfoot, and she looked so confused and asked with that 'I'm worried about you more than usual' face who had told her all that and then carefully explained that all of the conspiracy theories were wrong… except maybe the one about the Council. Except it probably wasn't really called the Council. Somehow, she didn't think it was Sophie at fault this time.

"What?" Hardison asked. "Hold up a second, girl. What'd I lie to you about?"

"Area 51," she said, ticking theories off on her fingers. "Area _52_. The Loch Ness Monster. Bigfoot. The Easter Bunny. X-men. Vampires. Virus mutant zombie apocalypse. Do you even really have a plan for that?"

Alec would have laughed if he wasn't completely terrified that she would take that the wrong way. "Uh, yeah, I do." Everyone should have a zombie apocalypse survival plan. That was just good sense. Just in case. "Who, uh… told you we lied about those things?" He would have asked why she wasn't interrogating Eliot, since he was the one who started it, but he suspected the answer was that she knew he was the weaker link, and he didn't really want to hear her say it.

"Sophie. Well?"

"Damnit, Sophie!" Really, he had expected it to take longer than five hours to figure out that none of that stuff was real.

"Why did you lie to me, Hardison?" Parker asked again, uncertain as to why it was apparently so difficult to answer her question, especially since his 'damnit, Sophie' made it clear that he and Eliot _were_ the liars. Hardison was really smart. It shouldn't be that hard for him to answer a simple question. "I thought you liked me."

"W-what? Of course I like you. I like you a lot, Parker."

"Then _why_ did you –"

"Why did I lie to you, yeah, I heard you, girl." He hesitated and she scowled at him, waiting for his actual answer. "We were just teasin', Parker. We didn't mean anything mean by it."

"Teasing?" For the first time since she arrived, Alec heard a note of uncertainty in her tone. Maybe, if he was lucky, he would be getting out of this without getting stabbed with something not meant for stabbing. Or at all. That would also be good.

"Yeah, girl. It's just… fun. Y'know, like how Eliot pretends he can't use a computer to mess with me, an' Sophie uses all her innuendoes with Nate to make him uncomfortable. It's… a way of showin' you comfortable with people."

"So… you lied to me because it was funny because you felt comfortable with me?" Parker did not, Alec thought, look impressed with his reasoning. He had to admit, when she said it like that, it sounded really stupid. "I don't get it."

Would it be wrong to tell her to go ask Sophie? Alec wondered. Relationships, like real world interactions between people, at least the talking about them part, weren't his strong suit. He could get along alright, like, in the moment, but explaining how and why people worked? Forget about it.

Hardison sighed and then tried again with different words. "It's more like… okay, when you trust a person, see, you feel safe making them a little uncomfortable, an' it like, gets their attention without worryin' that they're gonna run off on you, or you gonna scare 'em away. Like kinda pokin' a person, it's a little irritating, maybe, but it makes 'em pay attention."

"Why couldn't you just say 'hey, Parker' if you wanted to get my attention?" Parker grumbled. That was, she thought, the whole point of having a name.

"I… you just… it's different," Alec said, defeated by the Parker-logic. "Friends tease each other, alright? I can't explain it better than that. You should maybe go ask Sophie."

"Does that mean we're friends?" Parker asked. She hadn't really had friends since… ever. Definitely not since she moved to New York when she was fourteen.

Hardison was clearing his throat weirdly. "I, uh… I think we're a little more than friends, Parker," he said.

"Why? What are we, then?" she asked, at a loss as to what he might mean.

Alec chickened out. He could have told her that he liked her as more than friends. He should have. But he didn't. "The team – we're teammates _and_ friends. We, y'know, depend on each other. It's more than just friendship. Yeah." He rubbed the back of his neck self-consciously, trying not to think _If you were waiting for the opportune moment, that was it._

"Oh. Okay." Parker let a brilliant grin break across her face. That was a good thing. Teammates and friends. She could do that. As soon as she went to track down Sophie and asked the older woman why she hadn't just said the boys were teasing her, and what it all actually meant, just to be sure.

Alec was so stunned by the genuine smile lighting up Parker's face that she was gone before he realized she was going, leaving with her characteristic lack of farewell. He was so torn between being pleased that she was that happy about being friends with him and kicking himself for probably putting himself in the friend-zone forever that he didn't even notice when, half an hour later, he got a very angry text from Sophie, asking what the hell he was thinking, sending Parker to talk to her at three AM.


	18. After the Three Days of the Hunter (II)

**[By request, for Jem4ever]**

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After 02x05 (The Three Days of the Hunter Job), _3_ AM

Parker and Sophie

Sophie's POV

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Sophie woke with a start, heart racing, unsure what had startled her. Nothing seemed to be out of place. Perhaps it was just one of those things, like when your leg jerks in your sleep, or you suddenly feel as though you're falling. She snuggled deeper into her blankets and looked back at the window one last time before closing her eyes again, then proceeded to nearly have a heart attack at the sudden appearance of a slight figure, backlit by the ever-present glow of the city.

Parker giggled, and pounced onto the bed next to her, with hardly any impact at all. "Hi, Sophie."

"Damn it, Parker," the grifter growled, strongly considering turning her back to the girl.

"That's Eliot's line," the thief informed her.

"Parker. I will ask you this only once," Sophie began, summoning her sternest tone, despite the fact that they were in bed, and she was wearing what might charitably be called pyjamas, but were actually the oldest, rattiest sweats and tee-shirt she owned. "What. Do. You. Want?"

"Why didn't you tell me that Eliot and Hardison were teasing me?"

"You woke me up at… three in the morning to ask… what?"

Parker repeated herself as though Sophie was particularly slow, which Sophie thought was just too rich, coming from her.

"Go away."

This response was met by a flat look of disbelief.

"Seriously, Parker. It's the middle of the night. Go sleep, and ask me again at a reasonable hour."

"This… is… a reasonable hour. Isn't it?"

"Oh, for the love of! Parker! No! This is absurd!"

The blonde sighed. "Fine. Be that way." She rolled over onto her side, closed her eyes, and, still on top of the covers, pretended to go to sleep. At least, Sophie hoped she was pretending.

"Erm… Parker?"

One very blue eye opened to peer at her with something like irritation. "You said go to sleep."

"Not _here_!"

"Why not?"

"Because!"

"Because why?"

"I don't sleep with team-mates!" Sophie snapped, for lack of a better reason.

What she strongly suspected was supposed to be a mischievous smirk curled across the younger woman's face. "Bet you'd sleep with _Nate_."

"Parker!"

"Fine, I'll go sleep on the sofa."

"Or you could _go home_."

"Or you could answer my question, and I could go try to sneak up on Eliot at his gym."

Sophie was fairly certain that even _Parker_ could understand her disarticulate noise of frustration. "What was your question, again?"

Parker blinked innocently at her, sideways, as her head was still firmly glued to the pillow. "Why didn't you tell me that the boys were teasing me, and why were they, anyway, and what does it all mean?"

"Ugh. _Parker_. Shouldn't you be talking to the boys about this?"

"Hardison said I should talk to you, and Eliot and I don't do feelings and stuff."

Hardison was, Sophie decided, officially on her shit-list. "I didn't tell you that the boys were teasing you because after I told you about all their conspiracy theories, I thought you'd realized that was what they were doing. They were teasing you in the first place because ganging up on one person gives others a way of bonding through a shared social activity, while also testing the boundaries of their relationship with you. And it _means_ that they feel comfortable with you and they're becoming better friends with each-other as well. _Now_ can I go back to sleep?"

"Oh. That's pretty much what Hardison said. Yes. Wait! Does that mean I'm friends with Eliot, too?"

Sophie resisted the urge to thump her head against the head-board. "Yes. Sure. Whatever."

"Hmmm… I think I'll wait for him to tell me himself," the girl mused.

"Good idea, Parker." _Now GO AWAY!_

"Two friends in one night!" she grinned. It would have been adorable if Sophie hadn't been so very tired, confused, and irritated.

"Well done. Parker?"

"Hmm?"

"Please leave my apartment and let me go back to sleep."

"Okay. You should have just asked."

The thief rolled off the bed like a shadow and slipped out through the window, silently closing it behind herself and dropping out of sight before Sophie could overcome her indignation at that parting statement. _The bloody_ cheek _of that child!_

She was left to take her anger out on Hardison for sending the wretched girl to wake her in the first place via text message. It was, she decided, somewhat less than fulfilling.


	19. After the Top Hat Job

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After 02x06 (The Top Hat Job)

Parker and Sophie

Sophie's POV

* * *

"You're worried about Nate," Parker said, appearing behind Sophie as she helped herself to a glass of water in her kitchen.

"Jesus Christ, Parker! Would you stop that?!" Sophie exclaimed, once again startled by the thief's uninvited and unexpected appearance.

Blank blue eyes met hers as the girl cocked her head to the side. "Stop what?"

"Stop sneaking up on me, you bloody lunatic!"

Parker just shrugged. "Being loud is like getting caught. I don't get caught."

"So that's a no, then?" The blonde looked incredibly confused about the rhetorical question. Before she could figure out whether 'yes' or 'no' meant 'of course I'm going to keep sneaking up on you in the middle of the night in your own apartment, because I have no concept of normal hours or personal space,' Sophie waved the question away. "Never mind. What do you want, Parker?"

"You're worried about Nate," she repeated.

"Yes. I am," Sophie admitted. She had no idea what point the younger woman was trying to make.

"You said that if he kept winning, it was going to break him when he lost."

"Yes, I did." She hadn't thought that Parker was paying attention, by that point, but it was true. It was only a matter of time until Nate finally failed and shattered the illusion of control he had built up over the course of his association with the team. Though she hadn't come right out and spoken of it with the team, she had been decidedly uncomfortable with the few words she and Nate had exchanged on the subject of control while setting up that magic show. He was building up his self-image around his ability to control the world around him, and if there was one thing any good grifter knew, it was that people were their own agents. You could suggest things, manipulate, push them all you liked, but you could never control them, not completely. It was a hard lesson to learn, and so far, Nate hadn't. But with every job riskier and more high-stakes than the last, it was only a matter of time. When they failed – not if – it was bound to happen eventually – it might be as great a blow to their mastermind as losing his son, and the man was already dangerously unstable at times. This obsession with their work, this newfound sobriety… it was a last ditch effort to cling to routine and sanity, as far as she was concerned.

"It'll be worse the longer he wins?"

"Yes, Parker, I'm afraid so."

"So we need to make sure he loses soon."

"Wait, what? Parker, are you suggesting that we sabotage a job?" Sophie mentally crossed her fingers that that _wasn't_ what the crazy thief had meant, because she couldn't imagine what else 'make sure he loses soon' could mean.

The girl shrugged. "It's better... easier than making sure he never loses."

 _Oh. My. God. Seriously?!_ "Parker, you can't just… Why?" Sophie asked helplessly. She wasn't often speechless, but the woman in front of her seemed to have rather a monopoly on inducing that state in her lately. What the hell could she be thinking?

The thief, with a look that said all of this was, in her mind, as simple as one and one making two, counted off points on her fingers as she repeated herself. "If Nate keeps winning, losing is going to break him. It's going to be worse the longer he keeps winning. You're worried you won't be able to fix him if he breaks too badly. So there's two options: don't let him break, or do it now, as soon as possible, and then fix him. It's really only a matter of time until we lose. I mean, even I lose sometimes, even if I never get caught. So we need to make sure he loses. Soon."

That was very… logical, Sophie supposed, assuming one had no idea how normal people thought, and would feel about being double-crossed by their own team. (Out of all of them, Parker was the only one who had truly accepted her excuse for trying to get both Davids. She had, in fact, gone so far as to say that she would have done the same, and that it was the taking-down-Blackpoole part of the plan that was at fault, since they had had both statuettes in hand at one point… though she had also pointed out that if Sophie wanted it that badly, she could have just asked Parker to take it in the first place. It wasn't, after all, as though 'the tiny naked man' had been difficult to take.)

For Nate, though, another betrayal, by Parker as well as Sophie, would be even worse than losing a job.

"No," she said firmly.

"Why not?"

"Having me… us… manipulate him like that… making him lose… it would be so much worse than just failing when we've done everything we could," she said gently, willing the younger woman to understand. "We wouldn't just be unable to put him back together, he wouldn't even want us to try."

"Well, obviously we wouldn't tell him."

"Parker, do you honestly think that we could pull one over on Nate like that?" Sophie, for one wasn't sure she could even bring herself to try.

"Eliot would help."

"No, he wouldn't. He thinks Nate's coping. And anyway, we're not doing it."

"Why not?"

" _Because_ , Parker… I can't do that to him. I just… can't." Breaking Nate, losing his trust for good... he had been the one constant in her life for so long. Losing him now, when she was already so close to the edge of a complete breakdown herself was unthinkable.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, Parker," Sophie nearly growled in frustration. "Of course I'm sure. It… it wouldn't be right. It wouldn't work." She sighed, and then added, "I appreciate the fact that you're worried too, and you're trying to come up with a solution, but people just don't work that way, darling."

The little blonde thief seemed to collapse in on herself. "We need Nate, Sophie. It doesn't work without him."

Sophie smiled grimly, recalling the six month hiatus after the Davids. Unfortunately, Parker was right. It just didn't work without Nate and his bloody helping-people thing, not anymore, and not only for her. "Well, then, I guess we'll just have to not let him break, won't we?" she offered.

"I guess." The thief let herself out without another word. The conversation seemed to hang heavy and unfinished in the air, long after she was gone, and her fleeting look of anxious disappointment haunted Sophie's dreams that night.


	20. After the Two Live Crew Job

**[loudmouse – thanks! I'm glad you're enjoying it. I'm not really sure why a Nate-Parker conversation hasn't come up yet, but you're right, it should… What do you think of him seeking her out to make sure she's okay after the Future Job? Somehow the only other ideas I have for them in my queue are for Season 5, so I'm open to suggestions if you had a specific issue or episode in mind.**

 **This is the third re-write of this little chat. I'm publishing it because I really, truly just want to move on at this point. (There is no reason to spend five days on three pages!) *grump* Still not terribly pleased with it. Every time I thought I had a decent direction for the conversation to go, it floundered. Bah!]**

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(More) 2 AM Conversations

After 02x07 (the Two Live Crew Job)

Sophie and Parker

Parker's POV

* * *

Sophie and Parker were both staying the night at Nate's apartment, though Parker wasn't sure if Nate knew that. He knew that Sophie was staying, obviously – he had invited her, after her apartment exploded – but Parker hadn't wanted to tell him she was unwilling to go back to her place with Apollo in town. He was almost as good as she was, and after she beat him at the job and their lock-picking race, she didn't want him following her back to her warehouse to take a crack at it. So she had just let herself back in at Nate's, after everyone else left and Nate went to bed.

The grifter had taken Parker's sudden appearance rather better than usual, telling her only that she'd better be quiet, because Sophie wanted to get some sleep. So now, several hours later, Parker was curled up in a chair, idly tying and untying knots and watching Sophie stare off into space on the sofa, clearly unable to sleep, looking almost as dead as she did lying in that coffin. Apparently Sophie was thinking something similar, because she said, suddenly, "I never did thank you, Parker, for saving my life."

"Uh… you're welcome?"

Sophie smiled. "No, really, thank you. I – I truly thought, for a moment there, that I was done for." As far as Parker was concerned, it wasn't that big a deal. She had lost track of the number of times she had almost died, and Sophie really hadn't been that close. Not, like, breaking a line and falling down an elevator shaft close (Parker had gotten friction burns through her gloves on that one, and dislocated a shoulder, and still broke a leg on the landing). She certainly wasn't going to let Eliot live down telling Sophie to drop the bomb and run instead of just very carefully setting it down on the counter, which is what she thought was going to happen when she left, but since Sophie had just dropped it, anyway, Parker herself hadn't done that much to fix the problem.

"I didn't do anything, really," she pointed out.

Sophie shook her head in a way that Parker was pretty sure meant she didn't agree, but wasn't going to argue about it. After a while, it became clear that the older woman wasn't going to say anything else. Normally, Parker thought, that would be fine – she didn't mind the silence like Hardison seemed to. Before the team, she went days sometimes without talking, and she still got along best with Eliot and his long, comfortable silences. Hardison and Sophie, though, were always full of words, and it seemed wrong that Sophie was now so quiet.

She hesitated to ask, but the grifter had always encouraged her to talk about her feelings and ask questions when she didn't understand something, even more since they had all moved to Boston. "Are you okay, Sophie?"

The older woman startled, just a little. "What? Yes, of course I am. Why do you ask?" she spoke too quickly, almost like she wanted Parker to know she was lying.

Parker did not, however know what to make of that, so she took her time piecing together the answer to the question instead. "You just… don't seem very… happy, I guess, about not-dying."

Sophie's eyes widened, reflecting the light of the sleeping monitors. "What?"

The thief smiled slightly at the other woman's apparent surprise. It was always a little funny to see Sophie realize something she didn't expect, like that Parker was more observant than the grifter thought. It was like sneaking up on her, but with words. "I know you all think there's something wrong with me, but I'm pretty sure normal people are usually more… relieved, after they think they're going to die. Everyone on that plane was practically crying when Hardison landed it," she pointed out. "You were relieved, then, right? And happy. You were all hugs and reassuring the client and Hardison that we were all okay. But this time you're all quiet and sad. Why?"

"There's nothing wrong with you," Sophie said automatically, or perhaps trying to avoid Parker's question. The thief just snorted. She knew that if there wasn't something wrong with her, Sophie wouldn't spend nearly so much time trying to teach her how to act normal. It must have gotten through to the older woman that Parker wasn't about to change the subject, because she eventually said, "Oh, fine. I have been a bit off, it's true, but not about… not about the bomb, or mostly not. I… I think I'm going to... go away for a while."

Parker froze. Sophie couldn't leave. Sophie was almost as important as Nate (and truth be told, Parker liked and trusted the grifter a good deal more than the honest man). Without Sophie, everything would fall apart, even if it wouldn't happen as fast as without Nate. "Where are you going?"

"I… I don't know," Sophie said, sitting up and drawing her knees in close like Parker did when she was upset.

"Now?"

"No, not… maybe in a few days. After I figure out where I'm going."

"Why?"

"I think I need some time to… think about things." Sophie's voice was shaky, not at all like the calm, confident tone it usually held.

"What kinds of things?"

The older woman was quiet for so long that Parker didn't think she was going to answer until she said, very quietly, "I think Sophie Devereaux is dead. It's just taken almost actually dying to see it."

"But you're Sophie. And you're not dead."

"I'm Sophie like you're Alice, Parker," the grifter said quietly.

Parker shook her head sharply. "No, you're Sophie like I'm Parker. You're… all the others like I'm Alice," she countered, ignoring the fact that the grifter had finally admitted that Parker wasn't really Alice.

Sophie sighed loudly. "No, Parker," she said gently, "Sophie Devereaux was a character, like any of the others. She was… selfish. That was her defining trait. She didn't care if she made enemies, as long as she got what she wanted. She would never have settled down with a crew like this. She didn't have friends. She didn't _help_ people. I'm… not Sophie. Not anymore. That character, that persona, she's dead."

"Well who are you, then?"

"I – I don't know," the older woman said with a sniff. "That's what I've got to figure out, I suppose."

Parker rolled her eyes like Eliot did whenever he thought she was being very silly. "Can't you just pick a name and be that person? That's what I did."

Now Sophie was the one who looked confused (which made two of them). "What?"

"Just pick a name. Like Parker. But, um… not actually Parker. That one's mine. And then we'll call you that, and you can be like Sophie, but with helping people and friends and a team." _And you can stay_ , she added silently, still reluctant to admit how much she cared for the team.

Sophie (not-Sophie?) was smiling now, but only with her mouth, not like she meant it. "It's not that simple, Parker."

Parker was pretty sure it was. She understood wanting to leave a name and a person you used to be behind. She didn't use the name she was born with or the one the foster system gave her for good reasons, and she'd had plenty of aliases like Alice over the years. She was always still herself, though, no matter what anyone else called her, and she couldn't see why the Sophie, or not-Sophie who took her shopping and helped her act normal and teased Eliot and humored Hardison by listening to his geek-speak and took care of all of them (but mostly Nate) had to go, just because the Sophie-alias didn't fit with the team. It didn't matter what that person was called, they needed her.

"You can't go," she said quietly, begging the older woman to understand. "It doesn't work without you, either."

Sophie was quiet for a long time, her cheeks growing wet with silent tears. "Oh, Parker," she said at last, "I'll come back. But I have to go… I just have to."

Parker didn't have an answer to that. She walked just away, letting herself out through a window. It wasn't fair of Sophie to bring them all back together, only to decide that she had to leave. All of a sudden, everything was broken, and Parker had no idea what to do about it.


	21. After the Ice Man Job

**[Marylynne7 - thanks for reading and reviewing! I'm glad you liked them.**

 **Loudmouse - Like the scene at the beginning of 3.1, but with Parker totally lecturing Nate on how he can't stay in jail because they need him? Could be fun :)**

 **guest - re: N &P post Inside Job - I'll see what I can do.]**

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(More) 2 AM Conversations

After 02x08 (The Ice Man Job)

Eliot and Hardison

Hardison's POV

 **[May not actually take place in the middle of the night. (gasp!) This conversation just seemed to perfect to leave out, and it wasn't until I went back to the episode to look into a couple of details that I realized it's still broad daylight when they're at the bar. Oops.]**

* * *

Alec was pretty sure Eliot wouldn't really break his arm, but he let the older man go, just in case. It was hard to tell with him sometimes – he might consider a broken arm a minor inconvenience and think nothing of it. Instead of trying to further force the hug, he busied himself ordering pizza to be delivered and chatting at Parker.

It wasn't until he went to pay for the pizza and came back that he realized there might have been more to her terseness than her usual awkwardness. She was gone.

"Hey, man, where'd Parker go?" he asked Eliot, hoping nothing was wrong.

The hitter gave him a look of scorn. "Who the hell knows?"

Alec shrugged. That was fair. He had no idea where the little blonde thief lived, and he had tried tracking her down. He was pretty sure she was more paranoid than Eliot, changing clothes (and leaving his bugs) at one of six different rental lockers downtown before disappearing off to wherever she lived – which had to be rented under an alias he didn't know about, unless she was squatting somewhere or breaking into houses or hotels to sleep, which he really wouldn't put past her, knowing how she hated paying for anything. She left her work phone at the office (or sometimes in one of the team's pockets), keeping an ancient flip phone (with no GPS) for emergency calls, and refused to talk even on that for more than a few seconds at a time, avoiding any kind of trace with obnoxious efficiency. She did usually say goodbye, though, before disappearing. "Was she like, mad or somethin'?"

"Damnit, Hardison! You're worse than she is! Yes, she's mad at you."

Wait – _what?_ "Why she mad at me? Could be she' mad at _you_ ," he pointed out irritably. "An' there's really no call to be sayin' I'm worse than her at – what?" Alec cut himself off under Eliot's laser-focused glare.

"At least she's tryin'a learn how to be part of a team. You're just… oblivious." Alec flinched, more at the disdain in Eliot's voice than at his words. "You seriously can't think of a reason that she might be just a little irritated with you?"

Alec figured his look of hurt confusion must have said volumes. Yeah, he got caught, but she'd helped rescue him. Even Eliot had, despite saying he wouldn't. And everything had turned out alright, hadn't it?

"Oh for the love of… Hardison, how does Parker define herself?"

"Umm, what?"

"She's a _thief_ , you idiot. This job ain't just what she does, it's what she _is_. Her reputation, her work, they're what makes her _Parker_. An' you just spent a whole job takin' credit for her work, not just on the con breakin' into that vault, but the shit she pulled makin' her name. Did you even ask? Or say thank-you?"

Alec really hadn't thought it would be a big deal at the time. He'd been more worried about the con, and then being freaking _kidnapped_. "You serious, man? I had'a make a reputation as a jewel thief, fast. What was I gonna do?"

"Okay, first off," Eliot said, in the too-calm voice that meant he was really angry, "don't act like this ain't a big deal. Someone took credit for my work like that, usin' my reputation without my permission, he'd be eatin' through a straw the rest of his life, an' if you think Parker's any less serious about her rep, you're an idiot. You better be glad she likes you. _Second_ , you might as well have just said you were Parker, takin' credit for the Polar Star and Damiani. You're fuckin' lucky as hell this guy was a nobody an' didn't know shit about who's done what. As for what you shoulda done, maybe _asked the expert ahead of time?_ If you had, I guarantee she coulda given you other jobs with no name attached. An' at the very least she wouldn't feel like you're takin' her for granted."

The hitter crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow at Alec, who couldn't help feeling like he'd just been punched in the gut. He hadn't even considered that he could blow the con if the mark knew of Parker's more famous jobs. He wasn't sure about that bit about Parker protecting her reputation – but the girl was crazy, and he had to admit, Eliot seemed to have a better line on how she thought a lot of the time. "I don't take her for granted," he said defensively.

"Yeah, man, ya kinda do," Eliot said relentlessly. "Did you even thank her for getting you outta that vault?"

Man, when realization hit, it hit hard. Shame washed over Alec even as he defended himself. "I did!"

"Well, you better apologize, too."

Alec nodded, picking at his pizza. Suddenly it didn't taste nearly as good as it should have. _Damn it_! Eliot was almost as good at this guilt-tripping thing as Nana. He just knew he was going to feel like shit until he followed the hitter's advice. The only problem was, he had no idea when he'd see Parker again. If she was really angry with him, she might avoid him for days.

"Can you, uh…" the hacker hesitated at the look on the older man's face.

"Can I what?"

"Can you tell Parker I need to talk to her? If you see her before I do, I mean."

"What makes you think I'd wanna do that?" Eliot asked roughly.

"What? Why wouldn't you?"

"Maybe I think you need to think about what you did wrong for a while." Eliot said with a sneer. A fucking _sneer_. Alec didn't even think the Southern good ole' boy knew _how_ to sneer.

"Wait – you ain't mad at me, too?"

"What the hell do you think, Hardison?"

"Why? What did I do to you?!"

Eliot glared before counting off the things Hardison had done wrong over the course of the job on his fingers. "You overplayed your damn hand, like you always fucking do. You went and got yourself captured, when it's my job to make sure you stay safe. Then you told the fuckin' _Russians_ that you could do somethin' you had no chance in hell of pullin' off. And when we finally got you out, you get all up in mine an' Parker's faces about how you think it all went down good, when we spent the whole damn day pullin' your ass outta the fire!"

Alec couldn't stop the slow smile that was spreading across his face. "You were worried about me?"

"Fuck yes, I was worried about you. An' it was all your stupid fault, so don't you even _think_ about getting' off that damn stool an' tryin'a get yourself another hug, 'cause I really will break your friggin' arm!"

The younger man wisely remained on his own stool, but he couldn't wipe the grin away. Eliot cared. He was worried, and not just because it was his job. Regardless of the fact that the hitter was mad at him now, Alec was still going to count that as a win, gaining the least amount of affection from his most standoffish teammate. "I'm sorry I made you worry," he said, when he felt like an appropriate amount of time had passed. "I'll… try not to get captured by Russians next time."

"You better not," Eliot growled in acceptance of the apology. "But I'm still not talkin' to Parker for you." He finished his beer and set the glass down with an audible _thunk_ as he got to his feet.

"Man, why not?" Alec whined. "She could be hidin' for days!"

"Then you'll just have to think about it for _days_." Eliot rolled his eyes and headed for the door, still looking back and talking as he went. "This ain't high school, man. I ain't gonna pass notes for you like it is an' get caught in the middle of you two."

Alec snorted into his drink at that image, in spite of his irritation and lingering guilt. Maybe it was a little high school, but he still hoped that the older man would take pity on him. After all, he had said he wouldn't come save Alec earlier, either, but he had anyway.

* * *

 **[Pre-OT3 alternate last paragraph (for Meg)]**

A thought rose unbidden into Alec's mind: _What if I_ _want_ _you caught in the middle of us?_ He flushed, and looked away from the older man, glad for the poor lighting and his dark complexion, hiding his embarrassment. By the time he looked up again, Eliot had gone. It was probably just as well. It wasn't like Eliot was any more interested in him than Parker was, and they were both mad at him, anyway. It was still a nice thought, though.


	22. After the Lost Heir Job

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After 02x09 (The Lost Heir Job)

Parker and Eliot

Eliot's POV

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A soft footfall and the scent of gardenias alerted Eliot to Parker's presence half a second before she appeared on the barstool next to him. He raised his hand to get another beer as she swiped his from in front of him. This was the sort of thing you got used to, practically living with a professional kleptomaniac.

"Hey, Parker," he said in greeting. She hardly ever returned it, but you got used to that, too.

"I don't trust her," she said without preamble.

"I know," he reassured her. "I don't either."

There was a moment of silence from Parker and flirting from Eliot as Cora brought over his (new) beer. When they were alone again, Parker demanded, "Do the thing."

"What thing?"

"The thing where you say that she's an ex-KGB assassin with ties to the Mafia because of her shoes."

"Oh, that thing," Eliot had to smile. He'd know more once he saw her in action in the field, but he already had a few suspicions. It helped that her name wasn't completely unfamiliar. Vance had mentioned her a time or two, though they had never been on the same dance team. "Well, the way she moves says ex-military, probably Army. She doesn't scream CIA to me, but she could be FBI trained. It's somethin' about the way they case a room when they enter and size up potential threats."

"Very distinctive?"

Eliot nodded. "I don't know much about her history, but I have heard her name before. She mostly grifts in Europe and Canada, because she doesn't want to muddy the waters here at home. Plays small games for cash and jewelry, when she's not trading favors with shady military guys."

"I don't like her."

"What do you want me to say, Parker? You don't have to like her, you just have to work with her. An' ya gotta admit, we do need a grifter."

"I'm not adorable," the thief pouted. Adorably.

Eliot grinned. "Is that what this is really about?"

"I'm not! Maggie's adorable. I'm… dangerous."

Parker thought Maggie was adorable, as best Eliot could tell, because she was the epitome of a citizen, a civilian, and yet had some idea of the kind of work the Leverage team did because of Nate and the two Davids job. She might have been the most innocent adult (and the most genuinely good person) Parker had ever interacted with.

Hardison, Nate, Sophie, and by extension, it seemed, Tara, thought _Parker_ was adorable because of the childish façade she put up on a daily basis, and the way she consistently failed to interact normally with the world around her in ways that seemed simplistic and innocent. This never seemed to bother her before. (Eliot, of course, knew that she was dangerous, too. If you asked him, she was the most dangerous person on the team, between her skills, her emotional instability, and her black-and-white (Parker-vs-not Parker) worldview.)

"You can be both," he said lightly, and then, as she was still glaring at him, he added, "Will you relax? It's a good thing when they underestimate you."

"Not when it's the people I'm s'posed to be working with," she grumbled.

"Look, Parker, ex-Army, ex-feds are never, ever gonna take you seriously as a threat. You gotta work with what you got, and you're not the kind of scary they're used to recognizin'."

"That's not the point, Eliot!" she said, sounding genuinely frustrated. "Adorable isn't just not-scary, it's… helpless. You protect it. Hardison's not-scary. He's not dangerous, but he's not adorable. I don't need people to think I'm scary, but I don't wanna work with a grifter that thinks I can't take care of myself."

Eliot took a minute to try to parse through the statement about Hardison. He gave up halfway through in favor of focusing on the beginning and end of the complaint, figuring that it was just an example she thought was helping to clarify when it wasn't at all. "You know, she got that opinion from Sophie."

"So?"

"So, Sophie thinks you're adorable too. And Nate, and Hardison," he added for good measure.

"They don't count."

Eliot snorted, trying to suppress a laugh at her stubborn expression. "Why not?"

"Because they're… us. Ours. Already. _She_ isn't. We could still tell her to go away." Eliot mentally translated this as 'They're already family and we're stuck with them, but if we have to take on another grifter, understanding [Parker] should be part of the interview.'

"Sorry to tell ya', sweetheart, but we're not gonna do any better."

"How do you know?"

"She's a professional, she's clearly competent, and Sophie vouched for her. There's only so many good grifters out there, and I can't think of any who'd meet those requirements _and_ have the right background to see you as anything but adorable, especially when they don't know ya." He could, actually, think of one or two people – a burned CIA agent and an ex-assassin – who might be equally competent grifters _and_ take Parker seriously, but he somehow doubted either of them were available, and anyway, Sophie hadn't sent _them_. She doubtless had something on Tara that made her trust the woman – there was no such thing as simple friendship between con artists.

"I'm a _thief_. That should automatically put me in the not-adorable category," Parker muttered. "Aren't grifters supposed to be good at reading people?"

"Well, yeah, but there's somethin' wrong with you." Eliot couldn't help himself. He was rewarded with a dig in the ribs from Parker's very sharp elbow. That might have actually left a bruise, damn it. "Seriously, though, Parker, you know how grifters read marks?"

"No. How?"

"Experience. Lots of it. And generalization. Most people's motivations boil down to fear – fear of loss or insecurity or age or whatever. Remember the Order 23 guy? What they want comes from that fear, and when you con them, you play on those fears and desires to make them think you have exactly what they want. _You_ don't fear the same things as most people, you don't want the same things as most people, you don't have the same experiences, so you're not even lookin' at the same playbook as most people. That makes you hard for them to read, and harder to predict and manipulate." Up until they realized that she would do anything for pancakes and a promise to help her steal either a lot of money, or very shiny jewelry, of course. For a multi-millionaire who appeared to have everything she wanted, Parker was absurdly easy to bribe.

"You can read me," she pointed out quietly.

"Yeah, well, I been watchin' you for a while now. I like to think I know you better than most. And I have a lot more experience with your kind of background than your average grifter."

Parker apparently had nothing to say to that, because she was silent for a long moment, and when she spoke again, it was to change the subject back to their original topic. "I still don't trust her."

"Do you trust Sophie?"

Parker hesitated, but eventually said, "Yes. Mostly."

Eliot almost sighed. He himself had had a lot of trouble trusting the grifter again after they returned from their six-month sabbatical. While she definitely wasn't the only one of them to have screwed up because her emotions got the better of her, she was the only one who had attempted to deliberately con the team for her own benefit. Since they had returned, he still watched her more closely than he once had for any signs of another betrayal. But there had been no such signs at all, and he did trust that she was doing right by them in sending Tara, if for no other reason than he couldn't think of any way it would have a pay-out for her to turn on them again. So he trusted her too. Mostly.

"Then you have to trust that she either trusts Tara, or has some leverage over her, and she'll play us fair," he said simply.

Parker didn't answer, just sitting there, almost suspiciously quiet, until she had finished the rest of her (Eliot's) beer, at which point she slipped away, leaving the empty bottle and a pile of shredded paper – the remnants of its label – behind.

It wasn't until he left the bar and was halfway home that Eliot realized Parker's irritation wasn't really about a lack of trust (though he didn't doubt that she mistrusted the new grifter as much as he did) or the fact that everyone else saw her as the most innocent member of the team – it was about respect, for her skills and expertise, that 'adorable' didn't recognize.

 _Damn it._

He kicked himself for not seeing it sooner (especially since he'd just had a talk with Hardison about something similar not too long before), and made a mental note to find an opportunity to reassure her that they were all well aware of her abilities and her role on the team… despite how adorable she was between jobs.


	23. After the Runway Job

**[Jem 4ever – Yes, I am planning on continuing, though I must admit I didn't quite realize when I started this idea how many episodes there were (I binge-watched them in a week, and it really didn't seem like that many, ie: enough). Updates are sporadic, because I'm mostly doing this when I hit a block working on my longer fem!Harry Potter series.**

 **Saimiri – Thanks! I'm glad you're enjoying it!**

 **This was the worst chat so far, I think, partly because I wanted to address the fact that Eliot was acting kind of off all episode… but I couldn't reconcile that off-ness with my portrayal of him thusfar. Having writer's block on the story you work on to counter writer's block is the WORST. But whatever. It's done, now.**

 **Let me know whether the boys still seem on-point here, and if not, how.]**

(More) 2 AM Conversations

After 02x10 (the Runway Job)

Eliot and Hardison

Eliot's POV

* * *

Eliot's ears twitched as he fiddled with Nate's Tivo. He thought he had set it up to record the game before he went to the gym, but maybe not. The same sound came to him again, a few seconds later – a half-suppressed snort of a giggle, originating with the hacker at the kitchen table. He stood up quickly and turned on his heel, ready to tell the younger man off for making light of his technological incompetence. If he had wanted the geek's input, he would have asked him to set the damn thing up in the first place! Sure enough, Hardison was shooting darting glances in his direction, and failing miserably as he tried not to smirk.

"What are _you_ lookin' at?" Eliot growled.

"Uh, nothin' man. Nothin'. Just, ah, finishin' up some of the loose ends on the sweathouse job." He tried in vain to hide the screens of the two laptops he had set up, without actually closing the programs that were running. Eliot peered over his shoulder, and snorted when he saw that the 'loose end' in question appeared to be 'Julian,' the makeup-wearing designer's assistant Eliot had had to portray for the con, specifically wiping his face from the thousands of photos and video frames that had been taken at Fashion Week and subsequently uploaded to the internet.

"You'd better not be thinkin' t'save any of those pictures," he grumbled. 'Julian' had not been his favorite alias. Give him a blue collar background – fine. Military, special forces, FBI – great. He could even do a decent academic if need be, but that high-maintenance, metrosexual BS had been far outside his comfort zone.

The utterly guilty look on the hacker's face said he probably already had, despite his quick, "No, 'course not." For a thief and a wannabe grifter, Hardison really was a shit liar. "Besides," he added too-quickly, changing the subject, "I'm surprised it bothers you."

"What bothers me?"

"Actin', you know, kinda gay."

Eliot almost laughed. "Why d'you think that'd bother me? You think I'm some sorta homophobe?"

"That's the thing – I thought it _wouldn'_. Figured you'd be, y'know, secure in your masculinity an' all that. But then you spent the whole job bein' all… manly man, an' tryin'a pick up models an' shit."

At Hardison's blatant attempt to not sound like some sort of pop-psychology moron, Eliot really did laugh. "Secure in my masculinity? Who really talks like that, Hardison?"

"People! Some people. Well, someone has to, righ'?"

"Yeah… right…"

"Naw, man – it's like this, I mean –"

"Hardison, just _stop talking_ ," Eliot suggested, stopping the younger man before he could dig himself an even bigger hole. He moved into the kitchen to check whether he needed to go shopping again before the next time he cooked the team dinner. Probably. Nate never did himself. He'd probably starve if Eliot didn't leave him leftovers. Hardison and Parker would live off junk food and whatever they could steal, respectively, and Sophie would – he stopped his mental rant at Sophie, still more than a little upset with her for running off to 'find herself' like some hippy college student.

Thankfully, Hardison was talking again. "Like that! You like, cook an' I _know_ you know about clothes an' stuff – you were on coms the whole time y'all were sneakin' back inna that show."

The older man growled. "So what, Hardison?"

"So why you actin' all ashamed of knowin' that stuff?"

Eliot snorted. "I'm not ashamed to know any of that – I dated a couple models, a fashion student – you pick things up." That he was damn proud of his cooking skills was, or _should be_ , obvious, and he didn't particularly want to share the circumstances of his learning with the younger man. He wouldn't understand.

"So what was _with_ you? The whole job you were just –"

"Horny as fuck, surrounded by gorgeous women gettin' dressed and undressed in front a' me? Are you seriously tellin' me you wouldn't've hit on any of them?"

"Not if I was supposed to be playin' a gay designer's PA!"

Eliot glared at him. "No one ever said my character was gay, Hardison." Truth be told, he'd only been acting _slightly_ more feminine than the hacker. If he didn't let it go, Eliot was going to have to bring up where he'd gotten his inspiration for the 'Seagal Scarf.' "Why do you even _care_?"

There was a definite flush to the younger man's face as he sputtered an incoherent defense. _Is Hardison gay?_ Eliot wondered, though he dismissed the thought immediately. He was far too obviously interested in Parker. _Bi, then?_ He was the one who had teased Eliot first about the makeup and the leather pants…

Eliot smirked, moving inside the taller man's guard and personal space. "Ever heard the term _metrosexual_?" he asked. "There's a difference b'tween how you act an' who you sleep with."

"What are you tryin'a say, Eliot?" Hardison asked, swallowing hard.

Eliot suppressed a triumphant smirk. _Yep, still got it._ "What do you think I'm tryin'a say, Hardison?" he asked gruffly.

"Wait – are you?"

 _No, I'd bet anything that you are,_ Eliot thought. He had, in fact, had sex with men on occasion – the Service did kind of limit the options, and when you're in life-or-death situations with a man, one thing can lead to another – but he didn't think it mattered enough to put a label on it. Aloud he said, "I don't see as how that's any'a your business, Hardison," backing off with his friendliest grin, curious as to whether the younger man had enough balls to make a move. "It's called Don't Ask, Don't Tell for a reason."

Hardison squinted at him for a long moment, as though trying to read his mind through force of will, then gave a rather nervous-sounding laugh. "You had me goin' there for a secon', man." He beat a hasty, blushing retreat to his computers. _Apparently not_. Eliot finally allowed himself that smirk as he let himself out of the apartment.

 _Poor kid_ , he thought as he made his way to his truck, still smiling. _Bad enough he's fallin' for Parker. I really shouldn't tease him like that_.

Because there was no way he would ever sleep with Hardison. If the kid had made a move back, it might have been a different story, but he had only proved himself to be appallingly young, and reminded Eliot that he was so innocent it hurt to talk to him sometimes. Hardison would be the kind of guy who wanted dates and hand holding and a real _relationship_ , when the whole world knew Eliot Spencer was the one-night rodeo sort. Plus he was also willing to bet that the geek, with his computers and video-games, was a virgin, and Eliot really, truly wasn't into being his first. Between that and the fact that they worked together, sex would only make things impossibly awkward between them.

But he couldn't deny the younger man's interest _was_ very flattering.


	24. After the Bottle Job

(More) 2 AM Conversations

After 02x11 (the Bottle Job)

Sophie and Parker

Sophie's POV

* * *

'Giselle' wandered silently through a nearly empty sculpture gallery. In two hours, the GNAM would be packed with tourists, but now it was quiet, and perfect for contemplating the artists' work as well as her own life.

Well, it would be perfect, if not for the obnoxiously persistent guard following her around and desperately trying to convince her to join him for coffee after his shift ended. There was a time and a place for such things, and when she was otherwise occupied appreciating Manzú's bronzes was not that time.

The mobile that Hardison had kindly (albeit slightly stalkerishly) sent her after she destroyed the last one – the one which the team all had the number for, in case of an emergency – chimed brightly. Giselle, who was thankful for an excuse to leave the guard behind, was instantly replaced by Sophie, and her concern that Hardison had been kidnapped by Russians again, or Tara had finally had it with Nate's antics and was leaving the team for good. She made her way toward the museum's main entrance as she answered.

"Pronto."

"Sophie?" Parker sounded almost… sad? Disappointed, maybe? She was hard to read face-to-face, let alone over the phone.

"Parker? What's wrong?" It was always slightly worrisome to get a call on the Emergency Mobile (lately they had been using Skype instead), but coming from an emotional Parker, it was doubly disturbing.

"Couldn't sleep." Boston was only six hours behind Rome. Quite frankly, Sophie was a bit surprised that Parker had even been trying to sleep. It was, after all, the middle of the night there.

"Why not?" she asked patiently, vaguely relieved that it wasn't, apparently, a matter of life and death.

"McRory died."

"McRory? The pub?" Had they burnt it down?

"The owner. His wake was today, and this loan shark came by trying to collect, and Nate was all like, _no, you're not taking the bar from Cora, she's like a niece to me,_ and then we ran the Wire in under an hour, and then Nate said we had to put a spike in him or he'd come back and we'd never get rid of him, so we rigged a poker game with a buncha cops an' got him arrested an' stole all his money an' gave it back to the people he loan-sharked."

"Um… okay?" _They ran the Wire_ in an hour? _How is that even_ possible? Sophie wondered. "And that's why you can't sleep?" Talking to Parker always left her feeling like she was missing something, but in this case she suspected much had been left out, because it _sounded_ like a successful night's work.

"No." The thief sounded bloody _miserable._

" _Parker_ ," Sophie said sternly, "If you don't tell me what's wrong, I can't help you."

There was a burst of static as the younger woman sighed too close to the phone. "Nate's drunk. He's drinking again. Since tonight. And you're not here, and Tara's not you, and he doesn't listen to anyone else."

"Oh, Parker," she couldn't help but sigh herself. It was probably true that Nate wouldn't listen to 'the kids' as he privately referred to their younger team-members, but none of the three of them would confront him about it directly in the first place. Hardison _thrived_ on pulling off whatever impossible task Nate drunkenly demanded of him; Eliot saw him, she was pretty sure, as his commanding officer, and wouldn't go against him until he actually made a fatal mistake; and Parker… she still wasn't sure what had happened to Parker growing up, but whatever it was, it had clearly inclined her to avoidance rather than confrontation in this situation.

"He was giving away our money again, Sophie, like before rehab. You have to talk to him again."

 _God_ fucking _damn it, Nate!_ she raged silently. "I will," she said grimly. _And_ she would talk to Tara about giving her a heads-up if he started getting out-of-control reckless. The other grifter was the only one of the four she could trust _not_ to trust Nate right over the side of a cliff. "And," she added, in a flash of inspiration, "you know you can always tell Eliot if the drinking is bothering you."

"You said Eliot doesn't think Nate has a problem."

"When did I say that?"

"When I said we should break him and you said we couldn't and I said Eliot would help and you said he thought Nate was coping."

 _Oh, that conversation…_ "That was when he was sober," she pointed out. "Eliot will see his drinking again as evidence that he's _not_ coping. He probably won't say anything on his own, but if he knows it's making you uncomfortable, he would."

"Oh… Um… why?"

Sophie smiled, vaguely amused by the fact that Parker still, after almost a year and a half with the team (not counting their six-month hiatus), didn't understand that the others cared about her and her welfare. She wondered if she ever would. "Because it's his job to protect you."

"I thought it was his job to protect Nate. And Hardison, I guess."

"What? Why only them?"

There was a hint of exasperation in the explanation: "Nate's not a thief, so he needs someone to watch his back when he's talking to a mark. And Hardison's… Hardison. He gets in trouble every time he leaves Lucille."

"What about you? Or me? Or Tara?"

" _You_ are in Italy, and _I_ can take care of myself," was the matter-of-fact response, followed by a reluctant, "and so can Tara, I guess."

Sophie sniggered at the lingering hint of antipathy toward her replacement, and made a mental note to warn the other woman that Parker still hadn't completely accepted her, despite expressing what Tara had thought was a positive emotion in her direction. "Eliot thinks it's his job to protect _everyone_ on the team, including you, Parker. And if you ask him, that will include against Nate's drinking."

"Are you sure?" the girl asked in a small voice.

"Yes. I'm positive."

"Okay. Thanks, Sophie."

"You're welcome, Parker."

The thief rang off before Sophie could say anything else, which she supposed meant that Parker had gotten everything she wanted out of the conversation. The grifter sighed and headed for the nearest café. Babysitting the team from a distance was _much_ harder than doing so from the same city, but it was worth it.

She thought she was finally starting to come to terms with the fact that she had (somehow, inexplicably, and so slowly she hadn't noticed it happening) _changed_ from the hot-headed, impetuous young grifter she had once been. Now, she found, she was _lonely_ , longing for Hardison's wit, Parker's off-beat observations, Eliot's solidly reassuring presence, and the audience that Parker had pointed out Nate effortlessly provided. Conning people for the sake of it didn't hold the same appeal it once had, and she found herself stopping more often to smell the metaphorical roses. And despite the fact that she had left them half a world away, she still felt _responsible_ for the team and their welfare.

Maybe, she thought with a tiny shudder, this was what people meant when they talked about growing up.

* * *

 **The GNAM is the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome. According to like five minutes' googling, Manzu does have some works there, and 'pronto' is the standard answering-the-phone greeting in Italian. But I don't actually speak Italian, and I've never been to Rome, so if I'm wrong, please let me know, and I'll make adjustments accordingly.**


	25. After the Zanzibar Marketplace Job

**[Meg – I promise, it's coming! I'm literally re-watching the Future Job** ** _right now_** **. (I'm trying to get the rest of Season 2 done this weekend, because I've neglected this fandom too long.)**

 **In case anyone missed it, CHAPTER 18 is now 'The Three Days of the Hunter Job, Part II' wherein Parker goes to bother Sophie after scaring the crap out of Hardison.]**

(More) 2 AM Conversations

After 02x12 (the Zanzibar Marketplace Job)

Nate and Hardison

Nate's POV

* * *

After Maggie left the bar, Nate stuck around.

Eliot had long since left – most likely, Nate thought, to work off his frustration on having to deal with Sterling and getting taken advantage of by the pretentious asshole _again_. (If Nate was honest with himself, he felt a bit bad about that – he had, after all, once assured Eliot that Sterling wouldn't be a problem, and now he was at fucking _Interpol_ , thanks to _their_ hard work.)

Parker disappeared not long after, and Nate had gotten a text from Maggie asking him to kindly stop his people from following her home. He strongly suspected that Parker had wanted to make sure the woman she still considered 'adorable' got home safely, and he hadn't the foggiest idea of what he was meant to do to stop her, especially if she decided to shadow her all the way back to California.

Tara had been flirting with various locals for drinks for most of the evening, but she had allowed one of them to pick her up about half an hour before last call, leaving only Hardison to keep him company. Nate suspected that despite, or possibly _because of_ Tara's relatively permissive attitude toward his drinking (at least in comparison to Sophie), the kids were attempting to keep an eye on him. It was vaguely irritating, but also sweet, in a demented, 'these people need to learn personal boundaries' way. Unless Sophie had coordinated it – he knew she had been talking to them all, regardless of her request for 'distance' – in which case it was one hundred percent infuriating. If she wanted to walk away, what he did after was _none_ of her business.

The hacker was nursing a sickly sweet cocktail – Bailey's and Buttershots, not so much a drink as a slightly alcoholic desert in a shot glass – and fiddling around on his phone, which was almost, Nate granted, as good as being left alone entirely. He finished off his fourth Irish coffee and stood to get a last refill.

"You good," he smirked at the younger man, "or you want another?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah, sure. Thanks, man. It's called a Buttery Nipple."

Nate did a double-take. "A _what_?"

"Hey, don't look at me! I didn' name it, an' they' tasty!"

The older man rolled his eyes. Hardison would probably eat sugar and nothing else if left to his own devices. But he wasn't really in a position to pass judgement on others' vices. "Right, one _Buttery Nipple_ coming right up."

Breaking the silence between them to offer a drink must have seemed like an invitation to Hardison, because as soon as Nate returned to their booth, he asked, "So, Nate, man… What's up with you an' Maggie?"

Nate snorted. "That is an _excellent_ question, Hardison. Really fucking good question. Let me know if you figure it out, yeah?"

"Wait. You don' know? Cause Parker said you two were makin' out in that elevator like it was goin' outta style."

" _Parker_ said that?" he raised an eyebrow in disbelief.

Hardison shrugged. "I mighta paraphrased a li'l bit. But c'mon, man, what's up with that?"

"I don't know. She thought we were going to die. I thought we were going to die. It was just one of those things. It didn't mean anything."

"Man, you gotta have more faith in us. We weren' gonna let you die. But she wanted the las' thing she ever did to be kissin' you? I'd say that means _somethin'_."

Nate sighed, staring into his coffee. "I thought so, too. Asked her if she'd stay. She says she's headed back to L.A."

The younger man's face twisted into a sympathetic wince. "Tha's cold, man."

"I can't really blame her," he shrugged. "I pushed her away, before, and it's not like I've gone out of my way to try to get her back."

"Well _yeah_ , but, um…"

"'But, um…' what, Hardison?"

"But, um… we all thought that was 'cause you was into Sophie, you know?"

An involuntary, strangled noise of frustration escaped from Nate's throat. "Is there any man on the fucking planet who's _not_ into Sophie? We weren't dating. We were never _together_. And just because she's gone doesn't mean I'm going to go crawling back to Maggie! It's not like I left Maggie because of Sophie. She left _me_ because…"

"Because you turned into a depressed alcoholic when your son died, and she couldn't handle it?" Hardison offered, in a tone that was almost Parker-esque in its coolness.

It was met by a humorless snort. "It's not exactly what she signed up for. And I wasn't there for her any more than she was for me. Sometimes things just don't work out, Hardison. I don't blame her. I'm pretty sure she doesn't blame me. She says…"

"What?"

Nate scrutinized the younger man's expression closely for a long moment before he answered, finding nothing but open, honest curiosity in his gaze. "She says she likes the man I've become, and she wishes I did, too."

Hardison contemplated this for a moment. "Sounds like good advice."

The older man said nothing, allowing the conversation to lapse into silence and attending to his rapidly-cooling coffee.

After a time, the hacker spoke again, in his most tentative tone. "Have you, um… that is, have you ever considered talkin' to someone about, you know, everything? Like a professional, I mean."

Nate's gut reaction was to snap that he didn't need that kind of help, but he checked himself, limiting it to a sardonic, "Yeah, I'm sure telling a shrink that I'm having a crisis of conscience over trying to atone for failing to save my son by leading a crew of internationally renowned thieves to commit acts of vigilante justice would go over _real_ well."

The kid just raised an unimpressed eyebrow. "You know what I meant," he said, knocking back the remaining half-shot of sickly-sweet liquor in his glass and rising from the table. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Nate watched him wave a pleasant farewell to the bartender, Max, quietly impressed by how much he had matured in the two years since they'd first met. He did know what he'd meant. Talk to someone about Sam. About Maggie. About the drinking, too, probably. Sophie had told him the same thing, more than once, after the rehab job. And he'd told her the same thing he wanted to tell Hardison: He didn't need their help. He could, would, and was dealing with it – with his own problems. He didn't need or want some 'expert' telling him exactly how fucked-up he was. _Believe me, I already know_.

Max was giving Nate, the last patron of the night, a look that said, 'Go home so I can lock the damn doors!' He was too polite to say it aloud, knowing what Nate and his crew had done for the bar and the neighborhood, but he obviously wanted to. He swallowed the last of his whisky-laced coffee and made his own way toward the exit, trying not to read too much into the cold, burning bitterness. There was probably some kind of metaphor in there for his life, but he didn't want to think about it.


	26. During the Future Job

**[The long-awaited Nate-Parker Conversation. Hope it lives up to your expectations. Lots of angst, serious!Parker and mourning!Nate.]**

(More) 2 AM Conversations

During 02x13 (the Future Job)

Nate and Parker

Parker's POV

 **Trigger warning: Flashbacks/descriptions of children dying. Moderately explicit.**

* * *

Parker did not go back to her warehouse the night after Rand pulled his evil cold-reading trick on her. When, at the end of the day, she had asked what they needed to do next, and Tara had said apologetically that all they had left to do was wait, she had paced around anxiously, angrily, until Eliot made her sit down to eat some pasta thing. After that, she hid in a cupboard in Nate's kitchen – one of the ones Eliot didn't use – until she finally had to get up and use the bathroom.

If she couldn't kill that _fucker_ Rand (and Nate and Tara and Sophie when Parker called her all said no, even though Hardison seemed okay with it in principle and Eliot had volunteered to help), and there was nothing left for her to do but wait to _break_ him and crush him into a little tiny smear like the _insect_ he was, then there was nothing to stop her from thinking about Danny. Thinking about Danny made her want to curl up into a little ball so tight that she might turn into a diamond, or else jump off the tallest building she could find _without_ her harness, because no matter what that lying piece of shit said, it _was_ her fault – Brooke's fault – that Danny was dead. Parker _was_ Brooke back then, and no matter what else changed, that didn't.

Brooke taught Danny how to ride a bike, yes, but she hadn't _quite_ managed to teach him how to do a stop-turn. That's what they were doing when Danny died. She was six, and far more coordinated. He was five, and thought his big sister knew everything. He followed her out into the street when she decided they needed more room to practice. She was the one who should have seen the car coming.

She didn't hear him fall, too wrapped up in the feel of her weight shifting on the tires as she pulled the brake and leaned forward, swinging the back wheel around behind her. She finished her second turn, safe in the driveway, just in time to see him die, lying in the road like an _animal_ , his right arm, broken, reaching out to her to save him. She was grinning in exhilaration as the light left his eyes, so pleased with her new trick, the scene before her not yet registering.

When it did, she screamed.

She knew she screamed, because that's why the Fitzhowes came running, but everything after that, everything until she felt the flames of the Mitchells' house burning at her back was (still is) a long, shock-smeared blur of senseless sights and sounds and smells.

It was the need to use the restroom that drew her out, saved her from reliving the memory again and again and again. Sometimes she didn't think of Danny for years at a time, but when she did, it was always like this – she couldn't stop seeing his dead eyes, hearing his laugh, the feel of his hand in hers as she dragged him out to play with her, sun shining on his hair as it fluttered in the breeze, and tire-tracks in blood, where the car hadn't even slowed down.

She nearly scared Nate half to death, cracking stiff joints and wiping dried tears from her face as she walked out of his kitchen.

"Jesus _Christ_ , Parker!"

She quirked her head to the side. She didn't feel like talking.

"Where have you – have you been here this whole time?"

She shrugged and continued toward the bathroom. It was night, now. Late, too. She wouldn't be this stiff if she hadn't been curled into a ball in the cupboard for at least four or five hours.

Nate was still there when she came back to the living room/briefing area, concern written across his face even more clearly than it had been earlier, when everyone had come back from the show and found her lying on the floor.

"Parker, come sit here," he waved at the sofa. "Talk to me."

"I don't wanna talk," she whispered, though she did sit down.

"You can just listen, then."

She nodded briefly. Anything to take her mind off Danny. The couch was too soft. She moved to the floor. She couldn't really see Nate from there, but that was okay. She didn't really like looking at people when they talked to her, anyway. Nate poured another drink, and set it down next to her. She didn't normally drink, but on a day like this, she savored the pain as the alcohol burned down her throat. She took a sip and let Nate's words wash over her.

"I know what it's like to lose the most important person in your life," he said quietly. "I know that you hate yourself for it, that you blame yourself for not being able to stop it..."

He was quiet for a minute before he continued. "When Sam… I did everything I could, and it still wasn't enough. He had leukemia, but the cancer wasn't what killed him – it was the treatment. A bone marrow transplant. Fifty fifty success rate. There was a new procedure, a safer way they could have tried to do it, but IYS – they called it experimental – refused to let us try it."

His voice grew thick, and she knew that if she looked up, he would be crying. She didn't. "I was there. I watched him die, on an operating table. I watched them try to shock him back to life, watched him fight and fail. I tried to get to him, to hold him in that last second, and I was too late. I was _too late_. I watched my baby boy die surrounded by doctors and sterile beeping fucking _machines_ , and all I can think is, he must have been so afraid – felt so alone, at the end, and I – I couldn't even do that for him, be there, at the end."

He was sobbing, now, and Parker didn't know what to say, so she said nothing while Nate took several interminable minutes to pull himself back together.

Eventually he spoke again. "Sometimes everything you can do just _isn't enough_ , Parker. That doesn't mean it's your fault. Your brother dying, it wasn't your fault. And… and it wasn't my fault that Sam died." He took a deep, shuddering breath. "You weren't driving the car that hit your brother. Do you hear me, Parker? We both did everything we could, and we couldn't save them, but it's not our fault." She nodded slowly, because she didn't want to argue about it, even though she knew he was wrong, at least about her. He didn't give his son cancer, but it was still her fault she and Danny had been playing in the street.

She could feel Nate's silent tears shaking the couch again as she leaned against it.

"How – how do you do it, Parker? Live, knowing that it's not your fault, but believing it is anyway?" he finally asked, a good five minutes later.

She looked at him for the first time in what seemed like hours, startled. He knew she didn't believe him? Then she snorted silently at herself. Of course he did. Nate knew _everything._ Except, apparently, this. She shrugged. "A… friend? I guess you'd call her a friend. Maybe. Um. Before the making her cry thing, and the Conduct Disorder thing. The psychologist they made me talk to after Foster Family Eight, anyway. She said that you never really get over losing someone you love. I guess that's how you know you really loved them? But you have to keep going on with your life anyway. So I usually don't think about it."

"But how?"

"You just… don't? Think about other things? Isn't that why you're all obsessive about our jobs?"

Nate nodded slowly. "It's not enough, though. I – It's never going to be enough to make up for Sam."

Parker was stymied, briefly. "I don't think that's the point. I could be wrong. I'm not good at people-things. But I'm pretty sure jobs and losing people don't balance out like numbers. I think you have to just get used to it hurting, because it's been twenty years since Danny died, and it still hurts when I have to think about it, which is why you should have just let me an' Eliot kill Rand. He deserves it for bringing it up. And the client would be happy, too," she pointed out.

"You can't just kill people, Parker," Nate said.

She was pretty sure he was wrong about that, but, she decided, yawning deeply, that she didn't really care enough to argue about it. Being emotional all day was exhausting, and now that she was sufficiently distracted, again, it was beginning to catch up with her. "Don't see why not," she mumbled, curling up in a chair.

" _Because_ , Parker," he started, then apparently realized she was falling asleep on him. "Parker?"

"Talk more later," she muttered, or at least tried to. It might not have come out right, because Nate said, "Parker?" again.

The last thing she remembered was a warm blanket being draped over her, and a whisky-smelling kiss pressed to the top of her head.


	27. After the Maltese Falcon Job (Part I)

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After 02x15 (The Maltese Falcon Job) Part I

Eliot and Sophie

Eliot's POV

* * *

Sophie had, indeed, planned their rescue properly. The helicopter carried them to the roof of a news studio in downtown Boston, and they exfiltrated themselves carefully, travelling separately to one of her bolt-holes – an apartment owned by an alias even Hardison didn't know about. It would be burned, of course, after this, as would that alias, but if this didn't qualify as an emergency, Eliot didn't know what did. Nate was shot and fucking _arrested_ , by _Sterling_ of all people. He was nursing a cracked rib and a minor concussion after taking out _thirteen_ enemy combatants in what was officially the Worst Plan Ever, and the others…

The others were a mess.

Sophie had been crying when she joined them in the chopper, and had only stopped when they needed to make their way through the studio. Parker hadn't spoken a single word since they had left Nate. She was curled up in a corner of the sofa, unresponsive in a way he hadn't seen since Serbia, save for flinching away from Sophie and Hardison when they tried to hug her or pat her back. And Hardison was furious. He had ranted about Nate lying to all of them and sacrificing himself, about Sophie coming back just after the nick of time, and about both Sophie and Tara not trusting them enough to tell them about the exit strategy. Eliot bit his tongue, _hard_ , on chewing him out for leaving their captive alone with a damn phone and letting the whole plan go to hell. This wasn't the time for that. They had to… regroup, first, before debriefing.

Hardison eventually wore himself out, and locked himself in the only bedroom to pass out. Eliot couldn't say he was surprised. They had all – except Sophie – been up for nearly 48 hours, and while Eliot and Parker might be used to that sort of sleep deprivation, the hacker certainly wasn't.

He sighed and turned to Sophie. "You can take the sofa."

"What about Parker?"

"I don't think she'll care."

"But she's…"

Eliot stomped over to stand in front of the apparently-catatonic thief. "Parker."

No response. He glared. Nate and Hardison had used up just about all of his patience for the day.

"Parker, move to the chair, or I'll move you myself."

She didn't answer, though he thought her eyes narrowed slightly in challenge.

"Fine." She didn't flinch when he grabbed her under the arms and lifted her bodily off the sofa. Perhaps she was only adverse to accepting the others' attempts at comfort? Crazy girl. She stayed curled stubbornly into a ball as he set her in an armchair and wrapped a throw blanket around her, despite his ribs' protesting.

Sophie looked reluctantly amused. "What about you?"

"Concussion. Can't sleep yet," he said, wandering into the small kitchen to take stock. Mostly dry goods, but that was to be expected, given that it _was_ a safe-house. There were dry beans and lentils, though. Rice. Enough cumin, coriander and chili-powder for a half-decent curry sauce. Sophie was the only other person on the team who appreciated good food. He could throw something together to tide them over until they got out of the city. Maybe a soda bread. Yes, there was powdered milk. It might be a bit odd with oil instead of butter, but it should come together well enough.

"Should you be up and moving around?" she asked, concerned, following him.

Like he'd never dealt with a concussion before. He could scrub up and make bread in his _sleep_. "I'll be fine as long as I don't have to drive or fight for a few hours."

"If you're sure…" she looked doubtful. "What are you making?"

"Curry lentils. Soda bread. Not a lot to work with, here," he answered shortly, salting a pot of water and pre-heating the oven.

"Sorry, short notice," she said with a sad smile.

It was too soon. "Sophie…"

"Laura."

"What?"

"Laura. That's my real name. You can – it's been long enough, I think. Call me Laura, please."

 _Whatever_ , he thought, measuring and mixing mechanically. At least she had apparently gotten what she wanted out of the whole taking-a-break thing. That still didn't mean he wanted to talk. " _Laura_ , then. Aren't you jetlagged? It's the middle of the night in Europe." _Take the hint, '_ Laura,' he willed her, but it didn't work.

She shook her head briefly. "I – I can't. Nate… I… He kissed me. On the ship. Eliot… he called me. He said – he admitted _he_ needed me. Not the team, him. And then to go do something like _this_? What the bloody hell was he th-thinking?"

 _Eliot_ was thinking that the last thing he wanted to deal with today was a crying Sophie – Laura – whoever she was. But she had come back for them. "Well at a guess, I'd say he was thinkin' he didn' see any other way to get the rest of us out. He got us inna' that mess, an'… he did the right thing, lookin' out for his team first."

"But why didn't he come _with_ us? You said it yourself, you could have taken the cops –"

"Soph – _Laura_. I don't like hittin' cops. If he'd'a asked, I woulda' done it, but… he was shot. This was the best way. They'll take care of him – get him patched up – he'd'a been a liability to us, now, runnin'."

Laura looked horrified. "He was _shot_? And I – oh, my God. I _slapped_ him!"

Eliot couldn't help but laugh at her sudden regret for her actions, which _he_ regretted instantly, as it jostled his ribs painfully. "He deserved it. He told us… he told us he had an out for _all_ of us. He played us, worse than you did over the Michelangelo. We… _I_ should have known, when he outlined the plan, that it was impossible. That this was the only way we could get out. Well, that or dropping everything and runnin'. Wouldn't be the first time."

Laura groaned. "So that's why Hardison's pissed?"

"That _and_ you not tellin' us that you had Tara runnin' around makin' secret meetings to put you on the board. He thought she was a traitor, let the prisoner escape while he was tellin' Parker, an' that's why Kadjic turned – fuckin' mayor clued him in."

"I –"

"Save it, Sophie. Laura. As far as I'm concerned, coming back counts for somethin'. But you didn' trust us to have your back, an' that cost us. So I don't care what your excuse is." _It's not good enough_ hung heavy in the air, unspoken.

That didn't stop her, of course. She made a noise of frustration, then said, "I didn't _tell_ you because I couldn't trust that you wouldn't tell _Nate_ , and… Parker was right."

"Parker?"

"She… she came to me, oh, months ago, after that utter mess with the magician, you remember, when we talked about how I was worried that he was going to lose a job, and break down completely?" Eliot nodded slowly. Parker had known about that? This was news to him. "Well, _Parker_ thought that the solution to that little problem was to sabotage a job, make him break down sooner rather than later, before he was too far gone to have a hope of fixing things."

"So you -?"

"So I just wanted him to realize that he's not God, Eliot. I wanted him to fail, and know that he was failing, and there was no way he could fix it, no safety net. If he knew I was there, waiting in the wings… it wouldn't have had the same impact."

"You wanted him to hit rock bottom." That… made sense. In a twisted way. _Fuck._

Laura made a face, but she didn't contradict him. "Well, if I'd known how bad it was going to be… I didn't think that rock bottom would be quite this…"

"Low?"

She sighed. "Exactly. Shot, arrested, _and_ in bed with James _fucking_ Sterling? I was _expecting_ a loss, a bender, for him to tell us all to bugger off – he was done! Not… not _this._ "

Eliot snorted. Like that would ever happen. "I've said it before, S – Laura. The drinking, the recklessness, they're not the problem. They're a symptom. He's… mourning. Not just for Sam, either – his whole life, his sense of identity – Nate Ford, Honest Man. _You_ should know that better than anyone." He gave her a pointed look, kneading the bread perhaps more vigorously than necessary before scoring a cross in the top of the loaf and dropping it onto a baking sheet. "Much as I _really_ hate to say it, this might be the best thing that coulda' happened to him. There's… not a lot of room for denial, in jail for the crimes he _has_ committed. And they'll get him sober. He'll have nothing but time to think, come to terms with his life."

"So what, you want to just _leave_ him there?" Laura's expression was somewhere between appalled and horrified.

Eliot shrugged. "Not forever. Give him a few months to work through things, heal up. We make ourselves scarce until then, let the heat die down. Let him testify against Kadjic, hold up whatever deal he made with Sterling. And then we'll break him out, set up somewhere else. Hardison's been talkin' about Denver."

Laura bit her lip as she considered this. Eliot poured the lentils in to boil. "Two months. Don't drop off the radar entirely. I'll keep an ear to the ground about the trial, call everyone in if it's sooner than that."

Eliot nodded. Eight weeks? He could do that.

Laura smiled weakly, and caught his flour-covered hand in a squeeze. "Thank you, Eliot."

He nodded again. "No more secrets, Laura." There was sure as hell no way he was going to tell her 'any time' on this one.

"Agreed," she said, almost too quickly, but he took that for relief. At least she wasn't crying anymore.

"Bread has to bake for forty-five minutes. I'm gonna' grab a shower. Don't let the lentils boil over."


	28. After the Maltese Falcon Job (Part II)

(More) 2 AM Conversations

After 02x15 (The Maltese Falcon Job) Part II

Parker and Eliot

Parker's POV

* * *

The team spent two nights holed up in one of Sophie's safehouses, just long enough to pull themselves back together and talk about exactly what had gone wrong. From there they scattered, spending eight weeks anywhere but Boston, before returning to watch Nate testify against Culpepper and Kadjic, and then in his own trial. Parker knew Hardison visited his Nana and foster-siblings before going to Denver to check out a possible new base of operations, if it turned out Boston was totally burned. Laura (as Sophie had decided she was to be called from now on) had to go back to wherever she was when Tara called her to fix Nate, and tie up loose ends. Parker decided to go out west and spend a few weeks jumping off of cliffs and climbing back up them to take her mind off Nate's declaration that they were family, only moments before abandoning them to save them from prison. Eliot went with her to start with (he was better at climbing than she expected), but after a few days, he got a call about a job in Brazil, and disappeared on short notice, only to turn up again a month later, all cuts and bruises, in no condition to rappel into the Grand Canyon, let alone climb back out.

It was the middle of the night and Eliot was driving on their way back to Boston, when he said, "Hey, Parker, you awake?"

"Kinda." She wasn't, really, but she wasn't really asleep, either. Eliot wouldn't let her pick the radio station anymore after that she found the Spanish Polka channel. He wouldn't let her drive, either, after Texas, and they were out of snacks (and "Not stoppin' again until we get outta this damn state!" because Eliot had something against Missouri), so there wasn't much to do except stare out the window and almost fall asleep to Eliot's country music and his sometimes singing along. She uncurled herself in the passenger seat, stretching as well as she could with the seatbelt still on (a precaution Eliot insisted she use, despite her trust in his ability to avoid crashing).

"Talk to me, then. Keep me awake."

She could do that, she supposed, but she didn't know what to say. "What do you want to talk about?"

"I dunno, Parker, anything." That was a lie, and Parker knew it. More than half the time, when she picked what they talked about, he ended up irritated. She stayed silent until he came up with a real suggestion: "Tell me what happened with you and Tara on that roof."

"Why? That was forever ago," she reminded him. _Weeks_. Tara was gone, now, and Sophie (Laura) was back, and even if they weren't, Tara obviously wanted to believe that Parker hadn't been about to drop her, so she probably wouldn't come looking for revenge, all of which meant, as far as Parker was concerned, that it hardly mattered.

"Yeah, but we were in that ship so I couldn't hear on coms, and I never got around to asking what actually happened."

Parker shrugged to show she didn't really care either way, and then explained, "Hardison told me she met with the marks and was selling us out, right after we finished dropping off the package. I hung her off the edge of the roof until she explained it was a meeting for Sophie, not for her. And then we went back to the car to meet up with everyone and she said she was worried I was going to drop her, and I said that was silly, and she acted like she believed I wouldn't actually kill her."

"Would you have?" Eliot looked away from the road to stare at her face as she answered.

"Yeah." It was a simple fact. She had come to trust Tara, against her better judgement, over the months they worked together, and when she found out that the woman had betrayed them, she would happily have dropped her off the building. In fact, it would have served her right if Parker hadn't believed her story about Sophie, after all her sneaking around and not trusting the rest of them, and dropped her anyway.

"Parker…" His eyes flicked back to the road for half a second before finding her face again. "You can't just…" he trailed off.

"I can't just what?"

He didn't answer for what seemed like a long time, though it was really only two and a half minutes. "It changes you, killin' a person," he finally said, staring at the road ahead with far-away eyes. "Even if it's for what seems like a good reason at the time."

He sounded like he knew what he was talking about, though Parker couldn't honestly say _she_ did. But maybe that was because she was already broken before she killed anyone, or because she was so young the first time she didn't really remember what she was like before.

"Have you? Killed people, I mean." That wasn't really the question she wanted to ask, because she was pretty sure she already knew the answer, but Sophie had said said it was better to change the subject slowly instead of just assuming your mark would know what you were talking about.

He gave her the 'stop bein' stupid,' look and ground out a single-word answer. "Yes."

She hadn't really expected anything else. He had fought in Croatia, after all, and Desert Storm, and there had been hints over the years that his job before he became a retrieval specialist really was as a hitter. "How did it change you?" That was the question she really wanted to know about.

Eliot was quiet even longer this time, but she had learned that if she really wanted him to tell her something, sometimes she had to be patient, like casing a bank or waiting for just the right moment to start dancing through a laser grid. So she waited. Four minutes and twenty-seven seconds later, he answered. "Before… before I joined the Army, I was just a kid. A farm boy. I thought I was all grown up an' doin' it for all the right reasons, standin' up for God and country."

He shook his head, still looking at the road, before he continued to speak. "I was a damn fool… It was hard at first. They don't tell you, before you enlist, how hard it is to point a gun at another person and pull the trigger the first time. You go in thinkin' it's all or nothin' but it's not. 'Specially if you don't know when exactly you make your first kill, when you and everyone else is all firin' at the same time, an' the enemy's dead at the end, and it mighta been you, but might not. But you were defendin' yourself, an' you're still alive, and that's all that matters. They make you think it's you or them, dehumanize the enemy, until it doesn't seem wrong to cut down anyone that's in your way, an' throw you into hostile territory. It gets easier. Your unit become your brothers, and the enemy become animals.

"You don't realize how far gone you are and how completely _fucked up_ it all is until you find a reason to step back, and see that it's not everyone else that's not human, it's you, 'cause you turned yourself into a fuckin' monster." His voice was harsh, like on a job, and the speedometer was slowly creeping upward. "And then… then you see shadows in your eyes an' realize you got blood on your hands that ain't ever gonna wash off, an' you either throw yourself in deeper 'cause it's all you know an' you're already damned, or you start clawin' your way back from the brink. But you can't stop knowin' that you have that darkness in you, and you can't ever fix it. You look yourself in the mirror, and you can't find the kid that used to look back at you. _That's_ how it changed me, Parker."

There was a scary note in Eliot's voice, like he was on the edge of losing control. The needle was hovering at 120, and his knuckles were white on the wheel. Parker might have been, in the eyes of her team mates (and everyone else), fearless when it came to things most people were afraid of, but she could read the warning signs of an angry man well enough, and she didn't like making people really mad at her. She couldn't think of anything to say to make this better, that wouldn't just make him fall apart all at once (and she really didn't want to see what would happen then).

She kept her mouth shut, thinking about what he had said while she waited for him to calm down, reasoning that he was plenty awake now, and didn't need her to make conversation. Maybe there was something wrong with her, she thought, mulling over the reason she wanted to know how killing was supposed to change a person, because she had never seen anything in her eyes but her own reflection, and she couldn't feel the blood on her hands.

She had killed more than once, and for lots of reasons. The Mitchells, the foster family after Danny dying, were first, when she was six, and they were passed out drunk and she accidentally-on-purpose blew up the house (she hadn't known what would happen when she left the gas stove on, pilot out, except that it was dangerous, because they always said not to), just trying to make enough trouble to get sent somewhere else (though that didn't mean she hadn't enjoyed the explosion).

A couple years later there was a man who tried to touch her in a way that eight-year-olds shouldn't be touched, who hadn't expected her to be carrying a knife (she was aiming for his hand, but missed, and cut what she learned later had to be his femoral artery – she ran and watched from a rooftop as he bled out beneath her).

The first person she killed on purpose (and the only one she did for revenge) was an older kid on the street – a bully – who thought he could steal from her (a sharp rock to the skull until he stopped moving, and then a few more times for good measure).

The only one she felt a little bad about was a guard in Trinidad on her very first heist without Archie – he grabbed her arm and she panicked and shot him with his own gun before she even realized she had lifted it. She still thought her sixteen-year-old self should have been good enough to escape without shooting him. It was sloppy.

A few years after that there were two Russian guards who did their rounds an hour early, ruining her perfect plan. She was on her way out by then, so the choice had been to kill them and run with her prize or get caught, and Parker never got caught. She had even killed for money a few times, but that was kind of boring, because people were never guarded as well as jewelry or cash.

She couldn't bring herself to really care about any of them. Death happens to everyone eventually. She didn't see why it should matter that she was their cause of death, and not some other accident (though Archie's reaction to her fuckup with the guard in Trinidad told her that other people definitely thought it did). Sure, Eliot had killed a lot more people than she did, but so did hurricanes. It was, so far as she was concerned, nothing to be so near losing control over. It wasn't like he was about to ruin the lives of a couple dozen children (the only time she could remember being so close to the edge as Eliot looked was in Serbia).

But then, she thought, reflecting on Serbia, maybe he wasn't upset about what _he_ did. He didn't know she had killed already. (No one on the team did. She didn't think they would like it, after their reaction to her wanting to kill Rand, and besides, Leverage didn't kill people anyway, so why tell them?) Didn't all this start because he thought Tara would have been her first? Maybe he was worried about her growing up to be like him, like she didn't want the orphans to grow up like her, all broken and _not right_. He had nothing to worry about, of course (even if she hadn't already killed), because she was already grown up, but maybe it was kind of the same thing?

Yes… she turned that idea over. It felt like it fit. Now how to use it? She suspected that pointing out she was a grown-up wouldn't give her enough leverage, and telling him she had already killed would be too much torque, misaligning everything all over again or jamming it all up. What was it Hardison said, back in Belgrade? That he liked the way Parker had turned out? Maybe that would work. Not the exact words, obviously, but what he had meant by them.

"I like you anyway," she said quietly, as calmly as she could, still scrunched into the corner of the cab, keeping a wary eye on the edgy (ex-)hitter.

It must have been, she judged, a right-enough thing to say, because his eyes flickered toward her briefly, then back to the road, and his hands slowly un-seized from the steering wheel and the speedometer ticked back down.

By the time they hit St. Louis, he looked mostly back to normal, and when they stopped at a motel on the other side of the city for a few hours' sleep (since she _still_ wasn't allowed to drive – it was only a _little_ police chase across the Texas panhandle! They weren't even State police, and she totally outran them before they got to Oklahoma!), he paused outside her door to say, "Thanks, Parker," in the gruff 'I mean it' voice.

She smiled, strongly reminded of the first time he stitched her up, after that awful flight to the Caymans – except this time, he was the one who had (apparently) needed her help. And somehow (she wasn't exactly sure how) she (apparently) managed to give it to him.

"Any time, Eliot."

* * *

 **So what does everyone think of this addition to Parker's backstory? I personally like the idea of her having a fairly casual relationship with death as a concept, as it applies to herself and other people, to the point that she just sees it as another part of life anymore. That doesn't mean, of course, that she is over the loss of her brother - but she puts him in a category of his own, because she loved him and he was taken away from her. If one of the team were to die, she would probably feel the similarly about them. But that's a Season 4 revelation...**


	29. After the Jailhouse Job

**[Thanks to everyone for reading and reviewing!]**

(More) 2 AM Conversations

After 03x01 (the Jailhouse Job)

Eliot and Nate

Nate's POV

* * *

After the party broke up at what Nate was really finding difficult now to think of as his own apartment, but he would be damned if he called 'Leverage HQ,' having resolved to take on Damian Moreau; after he declared to 'Sophie' that his intention was now to try being a drunk thief (and goddamnit, it was irritating that everyone else knew what her real name was, but he wouldn't give her the satisfaction of begging to know); after several hours of sitting, staring, blankly into space, wondering how long they could keep this up, keep doing the work, with a constant threat of death hovering over his crew, Eliot returned.

Nate would be lying if he said he hadn't hoped it would be Sophie, instead. He'd thought they had the beginnings of something, when she was trying to convince him to break out and rejoin them, or before, when he had kissed her on the ship. That was _definitely_ flirting, earlier, Miss, 'You're a thief, now. You can save yourself.' Wasn't it?

But she hadn't come back. And Eliot had. He grabbed the bottle that was keeping Nate company on the couch in what used to be his living room, and poured himself a double.

"Nate."

"Eliot."

Eliot drained the glass in a most uncharacteristic way – normally he was almost as… fastidious? (It wasn't the word he wanted, but he was feeling a buzz for the first time in months, so he wasn't about to complain. It would do.) Eliot was normally almost as fastidious about alcohol as Parker. He was always up for a beer or two, but he only ever sipped at the hard stuff. Now he had finished a double in under ten seconds, and was pouring himself a second.

That one he sipped at.

"It occurs to me," Nate found himself saying slowly, "that you never did answer my question, earlier."

"What question?" Eliot growled.

"Are we okay?"

The younger man caught his eye for the first time since they had run into the gunmen at the door. "Yeah. We're okay." After a second, he elaborated. "We always were. I just like makin' you sweat."

There was another long silence, and another round of drinks before Eliot spoke again.

"I understood, y'know. Puttin' yourself on the line to save your men – your crew. You got us in that mess, but you jumped on the grenade – made the sacrifice play, to get us out. I can respect that. An' y'came back in the end. Didn' leave us hangin' like ya made out you were gonna do. I'll admit, I was a little pissed when you told Sophie to fuck off. I talked her aroun', man. I talked _Parker_ around!"

Nate had known that Parker had been reluctant, at first, to break him out, but he'd figured it was mostly _Sophie_ who had talked her around. "You got Parker to talk about her feelings?"

"I'm a fuckin' genius, man, y'all underestimate me." Nate chuckled. That was probably true. "So, yeah, we're good."

"But?"

"But?" Eliot repeated, confused.

"I'm hearing a 'but,' there," Nate elaborated. "We're good, but…"

Eliot froze, then sighed.

"But that's not your job."

Now it was Nate's turn to be confused. "What?"

"It's not 'we're good, but…' it's 'you made the sacrifice play, and I can respect that, but…' that's not your job."

" _Eliot_ ," Nate started, but the younger man spoke over him.

"No, Nate. You know my role in this team. I'm not just the guy who punches people. I'm your security, your backup. It's _my_ job to take the hits so you guys can get in and get out. It's not your job to sacrifice yourself."

"Because it's yours?" Nate asked, unimpressed by Eliot's logic.

"Yes. _Your_ job is to be the brains of the outfit. You're our commander, our quarterback, whatever. You call the plays. You don't try to charm the mark, you don't try to crack a safe or hack a computer, and you sure as hell don't try to give yourself up to save the rest of us." He stood and cracked his back.

"Is that what you came here to say?"

"You tell me, Nate."

 _What the hell is that supposed to mean?_ "Maybe you'd better make it extra clear for me," he suggested, meeting Eliot's challenging glare with just a hint of genuine, alcohol induced confusion.

The hitter shook his head slowly before he spoke again. "You'd better be playin' this one straight with us, Nate. If this Damian Moreau thing is you tryin'a protect the rest of us, an' bein' honest with ya, I can't see anything this Italian has to send bein' worse than takin' on Moreau… we can find another way."

 _Yeah_ , Nate thought sarcastically. _And what is that other way going to be? Run? Forever?_ "No, if it was like that, none of you would be going anywhere near that fucker. Either one of those fuckers. And before you say it, I know as well as you do that even if we do the job she wants, she won't let us go, after. So we're doing the only thing we can: Take down Moreau, take down the Italian, walk away with a bad enough rep that no one will _ever_ consider blackmailing us again."

There was some kind of darkness in Eliot's eyes as he nodded, once, slowly. "Then we're good."

Nate had enough sense of theater and timing to recognize when he didn't get the last word. The hitter left silently, and he poured himself another drink.

Good might _not_ be the word for it.

But they were _back_.

* * *

 **[For anyone else who is wondering about Parker's line "I don't hurt people," in 01x02 and my interpretation of her post-02x15, I'll re-post the response I left on AO3:**

 **That one line really irks me, because it runs counter to my headcanon :/**

 **I have three potential explanations:**

 **a) Parker considers there to be a difference between hurting someone and killing them, because once you're dead, you're not hurting, which seems like the sort of lesson she might have learned at some point during an incredibly harsh childhood**

 **b) she said 'I don't hurt people,' so it's possible she meant she doesn't do so regularly or as a matter of course.**

 **c) she realized after Hardison and Sophie spoke up that the 'correct answer' (what the others wanted to hear) was that she didn't hurt people, so that's what she said. I think it's pretty clear later in the series that she actually does have a bit of a sadistic streak, though, so completely aside from the murder issue, either she wasn't that self-aware in Episode 2, interpreted the sentence differently from the others, or she was lying.]**


	30. Bonus: Between Seasons 2 and 3

(More) 2 AM Conversations

Bonus: Between Seasons 2 and 3

By request for loudmouse: Parker breaks into jail to talk to Nate about his abandoning the team by getting (and staying) arrested.

* * *

Two months was long enough for the heat to die down, long enough for Hardison, between all his other work, to systematically sabotage Interpol's files on them, along with the FBI and the CIA and all the other agencies with letters. He called it a working holiday, but they all knew he enjoyed the challenge. Two months was long enough for Laura to tie up the loose ends back in France, and create a rock-solid reporter alias that could visit Nate in prison and attend the trials in person.

Two months was long enough for Parker to experience _loneliness_ for the first time, like how Eliot said Hardison felt between the two David Jobs. It was long enough for Eliot to go work a side-job for Vance, and somehow – she still wasn't sure how – to trick Parker into admitting that she cared about all of them, even Nate, even though she was still so angry at Nate. It was even long enough to help her articulate _why_.

Two months was _not_ long enough for the justice system to try and convict Kadjik and the Mayor, or, for that matter, Nate himself.

When the team returned to Boston, Nate was still being kept in a local, medium security prison, for convenience, as he was periodically questioned or called to court. As Parker had informed Hardison, at length, 'medium security' meant 'not a walk in the park, but not actually by any means secure.'

So when she had sided with Hardison and said she wasn't sure that they should break Nate out after he finished putting Kadjik away, and Eliot had said that she should go and just tell Nate that, and why, and Laura had said, "No, actually, I think that's a very good idea. It will be good for you to get it out in the open," and they had all looked at her so expectantly (or, in Hardison's case, in disbelief – she had been practicing faces), there had really been no excuse.

And all that was why she was sitting cross-legged on one side of a cell door in a prison that hardly deserved the name, three months after the Maltese Falcon, talking through it to Nate, whom she could hear moving on the other side like he was doing the same.

Well, not _talking_ exactly, since she hadn't said anything yet, but close enough.

"Who's there?" Nate asked, just loud enough to hear.

Then a few minutes later: "I can hear you breathing through the door."

Parker rolled her eyes. He had to have his ear pressed right up against it, then. She stubbornly leaned forward so that it would seem like she left.

"Hello? Hello?"

"It's Parker," she finally whispered back.

"Parker?" Nate's normal voice was like shouting in the sleeping prison.

"Shhh!"

"Sorry," Nate whispered. "Parker?"

"Yes."

"What are you doing here? Sophie said you didn't want to break me out."

 _Who? Oh, Laura_. "I don't."

"So what are you doing here?"

"They said – Eliot and Sophie said, that I needed to tell you why."

"Why what?"

"Why I don't want to break you out."

"Oh. Why?"

"I'm mad at you, Nate."

"Wh – why?"

"It took me a long time to figure it out, but I think I've got it, now."

"O… _kay_ …?"

"You said we were family, Nate. And then you _left_ us. You could have escaped if you wanted to. You've been shot before. We could've run. We all could have gotten away. Scattered. You should've told us what Sterling had on us. We're thieves. I've spent twenty _years_ running from the cops! You said you had a plan to get us _all_ out, and we believed you, because you're _Nate_ , and you _lied to us_ , even though you said you don't con your team, and then you lied _again_ because you said we were your family, and you still let them take you!" She could feel tears in her eyes, and her shoulders were shaking against the door, her breathing growing ragged. She hated feeling things, almost as much as she hated Nate for making her.

"Parker?" Three seconds. "Parker, are you crying?"

"No!"

"Parker, it's okay."

"No, it's not okay! Because you didn't just get taken away, you _left_ – you don't want Eliot and L-Sophie to break you out, anyway. You never wanted us, and we forced ourselves on you, and now you're finally getting away, but you said we were family, first, and now – and now," she had to stop talking, because she couldn't breathe well enough to keep whispering.

"Parker, are you okay?"

"No, I am _not_ okay, because you said we were family, and now you don't want us anymore! You _abandoned_ us, Nate. You abandoned me. You still are, again and again, every time you say you don't want us to plan anything – and I _hate_ it, and I hate feeling it, and I hate you, and I want you to just stay here forever, since you'd obviously rather do that than come home to us."

"I – I'm sorry. Parker, I'm _sorry_. I didn't mean – I never meant…"

"No. You did. You're worse than Danny. At least he got _taken_ away. You _chose_ to leave, and you _keep_ choosing it, over and over, and it hurts the same every time!" She was well and truly crying, now.

"I didn't Parker – I swear! Don't cry. Please don't cry. It's not – it's not about you, any of you. Or, it is, but, please, don't cry. I gave myself up so you four could all be happy and free and live your own lives. Not to make you miserable."

"Well, you did." _Deep breaths, Parker,_ she whispered to herself with Laura's voice.

"It's – it's about _responsibility_ , Parker. I have a responsibility to the team, as the leader, to look out for you all, especially since I was the one who, well… went out of control and got all of us in the hole to start with. And I have a responsibility to society, to pay for my crimes. Our crimes."

"But how does sitting in jail pay for _anything_?" Sniffle.

"It's – I can't explain it, Parker. People want someone punished."

"But that's what _we_ do. _We_ punish the bad guys. And you can't do that in here."

"I can – I am. I'm going to finish putting Kadjik away."

"And after that?" Sniffle.

"I – Parker… I'm a thief. I admitted it to myself, finally. That means I'm one of the bad guys, too. And the law has every right to punish me for the things we've done. And I believe that, so I'll let them."

"Hardison is destroying Sterling's evidence. You don't have to stay here."

"I – I really do, Parker. Not just because of Sterling. I – I know you don't understand, and I'm sorry, and I don't want to leave you, but I –"

"I get it," she said quietly, breath finally back under control. "I do. Goodbye, Nate."

"Parker?"

And then she left. Because she did understand. If he wasn't staying in jail because of Sterling's threats, and he wasn't staying because he was abandoning them, there was only one explanation: Nate was a thief. He knew he was a thief – a bad man. But he was still a good man, too, and the good man in him wanted to see people like Nate Ford and Leverage punished, because that's what they thought was supposed to happen to bad men. He was breaking himself because one part of him hated another, and everything he tried to do as a bad man to do good things had only made it worse, so now he was trying to be a good man and admit he'd done bad things to try and fix it.

And all of _that_ meant she had to help Sophie and Eliot, because if Nate – _their_ Nate – wasn't abandoning them, they couldn't abandon him, either. As soon as Kadjik's trial was over, she would help save him from Evil, thinks-he's-good-but-really-isn't-helping-anyone Nate.

And she did feel a little better, after crying at him. Maybe Laura was onto something with this whole acknowledging emotions thing.


	31. After the Reunion Job

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After 03x02 (the Reunion Job)

Hardison and Eliot

Eliot's POV

* * *

Eliot was _not_ in a good mood when the rest of the team finally made their happy-go-lucky, all-coupled-up way back to the offices to debrief. Almost all of them seemed to realize that. Sophie winked and smiled and flirted, but sashayed out the door as quickly as she could, and Nate took a long, lingering look, and then excused himself to his bedroom, telling the three youngest to keep it down.

Parker, obviously a little spooked about the cow-eyes Hardison was still making at her _hours_ later, and sending slightly-concerned looks at Eliot, had 'sneakily' grabbed the last Tupperware of shrimp perciatelli from the fridge and jumped out the window. (As though he didn't make three times as much as necessary every time he cooked here and leave the extras for the whole team, anyway. Goofball.)

Hardison, though… kid was on Cloud Nine, and not lookin' to come down.

It was _fucking irritating._

And yet Eliot didn't feel like going back to his place, which was cold and dark and designed for maximum functionality and a minimum hiding-places. He was pretty sure Nate knew he was hanging around more lately, he just hadn't said anything yet. But the truth was, the hitter didn't want to leave the rest of his team. Hell, if he could, he'd get Parker and Sophie to come back and stay with Nate and Hardison (who _had_ his own place, but had also effectively moved into the office since all his best toys were _here_ ) as well, so he could keep an eye on all of them at once. But he knew as soon as he even suggested that Parker needed to be taken care of, she would taze him, and Sophie would pat his cheek patronizingly and tell him he was adorable. They just didn't understand – Moreau was in a totally different _league_ from their usual marks. He was fucking Moriarty _and_ the goddamn black market JPMorgan Chase all in one.

He growled under his breath as Hardison flopped down next to him on the couch, holding out a beer.

"Fine, man," Hardison drawled, taken aback. "More for me." He scooted a little further away. Eliot resisted the urge to 'facepalm,' as the hacker called it. This was what happened when Damian Moreau was back in the picture and Eliot had something to lose. He got all wound up and started pushing people away without even meaning to. _Damn it, Moreau!_

"It's not you. Hand it over," he ordered, and the younger man grinned, passing him the beer.

"You' not still pissed we got to go to the big dance an' you didn'?" he teased. "You jelly?"

Eliot snorted. If only. "No, Hardison. _I_ ain't the one obsessed with fuckin' high school."

"So you ain't got a stick up yo' ass 'cause Nate an' Sophie are finally gettin' it on, an' I spent the night dancin' with Parker?"

"Wait – what? No! Okay, for one thing, Nate an' Sophie are not 'gettin' it on,' okay? He's still not allowed to use her real name – they ain't sleeping together. An' number two, you did _not_ spend the night dancin' with Parker. You got one dance. _One_." Talk about getting ahead of yourself. It wasn't like they did the goddamn tango.

Hardison grinned. "I think you are. You' jelly!"

"Goddamn it! I am not. An' stop sayin' 'jelly' like it's a thing. Jelly goes with friggin' peanut butter, it's not…" he waved his free hand in the younger man's face.

The kid just laughed it off. "Whatever, man. I'm jus' sayin', for once, it's gonna be the geeky computer nerd that gets the girl, instead'a the quarterback."

"Hardison. Alec. I'm gonna tell you this one time, an' I wanna be as clear as possible here," Eliot grinned. "It was never, ever a competition."

Hardison groaned. "C'mon, man, you can' even let me have this once?"

"No, I'm bein' as serious as I know how right now – I am _not_ interested in Parker. Is she hot? Yes. I got eyes. Cute as hell? She's adorable. Strong and flexible and tough as nails? Yes, yes, and yes. But she's also an emotional mess, and she's _still_ twenty pounds of crazy, and learnin' how to be a real person."

"Is this the part where you give me the big brother talk?"

Eliot snorted. If anyone on the team was Big Brother, it was Hardison. But he knew what he meant. "You gonna try an' take advantage of her?"

"Of course not!"

"Then no, I ain't gonna give you the big brother talk. _You_ don' need it," then he gave the younger man a wicked grin. "Might tell _Parker_ not to play with _your_ heart, though."

"Man, shut up!"

"No, seriously, it's not the physical stuff that's gonna mess her up, it's the emotional, relationship-y stuff she don' know how to deal with. If you're serious about this, you're gonna have to be the one that teaches her how to do all that an' actually fall in love, 'cause Sophie an' I sure as hell ain't gonna do it."

"Man, I'm not even sure _I_ know how to do that – be in a relationship." Hardison actually looked a little nervous.

"Wait – what?"

"Whaddaya mean, 'wait, what?'? I never been in, you know… a real relationship."

"Seriously? Are you fuckin' with me?" No, he wasn't. He wasn't a good enough grifter to act that embarrassed. "Shit. We got the blind leadin' the blind. What were you even _doin'_ in high school? I mean, Parker's got an excuse – she never went, but you had the same chance as everyone else to figure this shit out!"

Eliot couldn't help but chuckle as Hardison arranged himself in a classic defensive pose, arms crossed and pouting slightly. "I was learnin' my _craft_ , man! I spent my senior prom breakin' the Bank of Iceland to pay my Nana's medical bills!"

"Damn it, Hardison," he shook his head. "I didn't realize…" He wouldn't have made fun of the kid for being such a geek in high school if he'd realized it was hitting home this much. "You aren't actually a virgin, too, are you?"

Hardison glared at him. "No, _Eliot_ , I'm not a virgin. There have been… women."

So… only like two, or else he was still trying to hide the fact that he was very clearly bisexual. Eliot wasn't really sure which. Both? It didn't really matter, anyway.

"Well, I sure as hell can't help you, either," he snorted, "'cause the last "real relationship" I was in, I got engaged, an' never made it to the wedding."

"Was that, oh, what was her name?"

"Aimee."

"Yeah, her."

"Yeah. High school sweetheart. She moved out to Kentucky with her daddy after we graduated, I joined the Army, she said she'd wait, I said I'd come back, and when I didn't, she didn't."

"Harsh, man."

Eliot sighed. "Just… try not to expect too much, you know. At least not right away. It _is_ Parker we're talkin' about here. An' don't let her set the pace."

"Man, that's like, the opposite of every piece of dating advice _ever_."

He shrugged. "You gotta pay attention an' know when to back off, but Parker's not gonna let you force her into anything she doesn't wanna do. Worst thing'll happen is she'll run an' hide for a few days, an' then ask Sophie for help figurin' out what you meant by, I dunno, givin' her flowers or somethin'."

"You, uh… you think she's interested, though?" Hardison fixed him with a very insecure look.

Eliot laughed. "I think there's a reason she keeps makin' out with you on the job, an' it ain't the atmosphere."

"Shut up," Hardison said, but he grinned and his face darkened slightly. Eliot smirked, and Hardison repeated himself. "Shut up, man."

"Alright, I'm shuttin' up," he grinned.

Nights like this, he decided, were the reason that putting up with threats like Moreau worth it.


	32. After the Inside Job

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After 03x03 (The Inside Job)

Hardison and Parker; Eliot and Parker (slight P/E, by request); Nate and Parker (by request)

Parker's POV

* * *

After the Wakefield job, it seemed like everyone wanted to talk to Parker. The only person _Parker_ wanted to talk to was Archie. Then she wanted to change her door code, and shift her bed and rigs-in-development to a different warehouse. It wasn't that she didn't _trust_ the crew – she had given Nate her real address, for emergencies, and made the code something she knew Sophie could guess, and she was glad she did, because it had helped them get to her in time – she just… wasn't comfortable with anyone knowing where she holed up. Plus it was a point of pride that even Hardison, who knew _everything,_ didn't know where she slept.

It wasn't really _surprising_ that they wanted to talk. She had a lifetime of experience learning from her mistakes, and knew without being told exactly what she had done wrong, and what the consequences would have been if the crew hadn't come for her, and why she should never, ever do anything like that again. But like she had told Archie, the Leverage crew was a little less disciplined than that. Nate liked telling people what to do, and Eliot had this _thing_ about 'debriefing' after jobs, and Sophie had gotten used to talking through the grifting parts of the jobs for the rest of them after and teaching them how to do it better, and any time she was in danger, Hardison did this thing where he wanted to be around her all the time for a few days, like he thought she was going to suddenly disappear on him.

She thought that it would be Sophie who caught up to her first, but she had also assumed that Hardison would, at some point, actually let her out of his sight. As soon as she and Nate got back from seeing Archie off, he'd glued himself to her side, and didn't leave until everyone else cleared out, leaving the two of them alone in the Poker Room. She absently palmed cards and flicked them across the felt as he gathered his thoughts.

He took a deep breath, and then, "Archie said he was your father."

That was _not_ what she was expecting him to say. She shrugged, and flicked another card trying to land it exactly on top of the last. Archie had been saying for years that he thought of her like a daughter. He had _real_ daughters, so he should know. She kind of had to take his word for it, since she didn't really know what it was like to have a father.

But it wasn't exactly news.

Hardison _harrumphed_ , then shifted like his chair was uncomfortable, or maybe his thoughts. "You, uh…" He paused. Sighed. Opened his mouth with that little intake of breath like he meant to say something, but then didn't. Twice. Sighed again, differently.

"What are you trying to say, Hardison?" _I'm not Sophie, I can't read your mind_ , she thought, wishing he would just say it or go away.

And then words started spilling out of him. "I got put with Nana when I was eight. She an' Pop – they were the best I could've hoped for, y'know? Don' really remember my dad. He died or ran off or somethin' way before my mama died, an' even that's not real clear, 'cos I was like, five. But Nana an' Pop, they were the best family I could've imagined, gettin' me outta the System, like they did. _They_ were family, an'… an'… they woulda hated the way Archie was talkin' about you, up on that roof, 'fore we got you on coms – he was sayin' you were like, his masterpiece."

Parker gave him a small smile. She knew exactly how proud of her Archie was, even if he was angry that she risked her life for his family and everyone else, but it was nice that the rest of the team knew it, too.

Hardison didn't seem to think so, though. He frowned dramatically, biting the inside of his lip before he added, "He was talkin' like you' hardly even human, Parker, let alone his daughter. It ain't right."

She mirrored his frown. "Hardison?"

"Yeah?" He looked… worried? She wondered why.

"I'm… Look." She took a deep breath, trying to find a way to articulate what she wanted to say. "You got lucky. I never did. Archie…" She hesitated to admit anything this personal, but Hardison had been in the System. He knew what kind of things happened there, even if he was one of the lucky ones. "Archie never hurt me. He never touched me any way I didn't want. He never got drunk or high and forgot I was there. By the time I met him, I didn't need more parents, I needed a teacher. He did more for me than any other 'father' ever did, so he can call me his daughter or his masterpiece or apprentice or whatever he wants."

Hardison didn't seem to have anything to say to that. He tried, again, for another few minutes, like he did before, sighing and muttering under his breath. Eventually, she just got up and walked away. He didn't follow her.

* * *

Her conversation with Eliot went much easier than she expected, when she let herself into his apartment the following night.

Sophie came to her, early in the morning. She was waiting outside when Parker showed up with a stolen car ( _borrowed_ , really, since she _did_ put it back when she was done with it) and a few boxes to move her things to a different warehouse. She had a feeling that particular conversation hadn't gone the way Sophie had expected, because she seemed to want to make sure that Parker was alright, and Parker couldn't figure out why she was even asking. She hadn't been caught, or even hurt, and it wouldn't damage her reputation _at all_ to have triggered a Steranko and escaped, even if the others _had_ stepped in to help her finish the job.

Eliot, by contrast, seemed to be avoiding her. He didn't come to the office all day. Parker wanted everything to go back to normal as soon as possible, so she decided to track him down. It wasn't hard.

He was still angry, that much was clear, but instead of tearing into her about all the bad choices she made, he only had one thing to say. Well, two things, but the first one was his usual complaint about her letting herself in through his bedroom window and catching him sleeping without pants. She was pretty sure if he really minded, he would start wearing pants, so she ignored this complaint, as usual. The other (probably more important) thing was, "No solo jobs, Parker. We're a team now. That means we're counting on you not to run off and get yourself killed. We share resources, we share the danger, and we share the payout. If you fuck things up for yourself, you're fucking things up for us, and that's not okay."

She nodded. She hadn't really thought of it like that, before. She didn't like that they had to come rescue her, but when he put it like that, she understood why they did.

"So you'll tell someone, if you want to take an outside job?"

She nodded again.

"Use your words, Parker," he growled.

She smirked. It was a very _Sophie_ thing to say, but a very different way than she would've said it. She considered teasing him by shaking her head, but seeing as she was trying to fix things, she decided to humor him. "I'll tell you if I'm taking an outside job. Or Nate. Promise."

"Good. S'all I'm askin' for," he sat up carefully, covering himself with a pillow, even though she didn't mind seeing him without it. Eliot was _very_ fit. "I'm assumin' you know more'n I do about what exactly went wrong in there."

She sighed, distracted from thoughts of naked Eliot by the fact that she had been _so close_. There was a large part of her that wanted to find _another_ Steranko, just to prove that she _could_ crack it _right_ , as a point of pride. But you couldn't improve if you refused to focus on what you did wrong, and pride gets good thieves killed. That was one of the most important lessons Archie had ever taught her. So she admitted her mistake, and left it at that: "My intel was bad. I got in fine, entered the wrong code, set off the alarms. I shouldn't have rushed verifying the codes the employer provided."

"What would you have done if we hadn't'a showed up?" There was more curiosity than accusation in the question.

She shrugged. "Worst case, the cops would've got me out of the building. And it's not like they put Sterankos in cop cars or holding cells. I'd've been fine." She hesitated, then admitted: "But Archie and his family wouldn't. And no one would have stopped the mad scientist blight lady." A few seconds later she added, "Thanks for following me." She meant it. She couldn't have _really_ stolen the blight without him, or the rest of the team.

"'S my job, Parker," he said in the gruff tone Sophie had identified for her as 'begrudgingly fond.' It meant he liked her, even if he didn't want to admit it.

She nodded and let herself back out through the window.

* * *

Her conversation with Nate didn't happen for nearly a week after that. She had almost forgotten that he still hadn't talked to her – had written it off, thinking that maybe he considered seeing Archie off with her to be enough of a one-on-one discussion. But then one night when she was hanging out at the office, researching the new Hamilton vault door on the big composite screen, he came stumbling upstairs after last call.

She ignored him, because she really, really didn't like to see him drinking. Even if he did keep it together enough to keep the team together, and wasn't gambling their money away on long-shot cons, she still didn't like it. It was… _undisciplined_. Maybe even worse than her taking on Wakefield solo. At least that had been testing her skills. The drinking was just… destroying himself slowly. He wasn't as bad as before he went to prison, but if he started getting worse again, she wouldn't bother telling Sophie to fix him again. She'd use Eliot's words and tell him herself: Destroying himself would destroy all of them, because they were a team.

No sooner had she reached that decision than she realized he was watching her. He sat down next to her. She could smell the whisky on his breath.

"You know, I'm proud of you," he said, his voice less hindered than his feet by the alcohol.

She gave him a look that said 'Why?' and then, when he didn't answer, repeated it aloud. "Why?"

"You went back. For the blight. Wakefield. You saw through Hannity's plan before any of us, before me, and you made the call to go back when you could've got out. The Parker I used to know wouldn't have done that."

"Old Parker wouldn't have gone in to save Archie's family in the first place," she pointed out. She wasn't entirely comfortable with the way being a part of Leverage had changed her over the past few years. It was… strange, feeling like there was sometimes a right thing in general that wasn't the right thing _for her_. Before, she had never known that helping people could feel as good as helping herself used to, back when she had had nothing. But she had friends now, and a team, and she had learned _so much_ about how to act like normal people – how to _relax_ , instead of being disciplined and on-guard all the time _._ She even enjoyed it, sometimes, like when she and Hardison listened to music and watched old movies and ate junk food, or when she practiced fighting with Eliot. She thought she was glad she had stuck around, on the whole.

Nate had been quiet while her mind wandered, but now he was talking again. "Doesn't mean I'm not proud of you." Silence settled between them for a long moment, mostly because she didn't know what to say to that. Archie had never expected anything when he said, _Well done, Parker_ , but there was an expectant quality to Nate's pause, as though he did.

"Okay?" she hazarded. She was pretty sure that was the wrong thing to say.

Her guess was confirmed when Nate gave a disappointed sigh. "Parker, you… you know I think of you as a person, right? You're not _just_ a thief to me, or a tool."

"Um… okay?" She hesitated, confused as to where he was going with this. "I… _am_ a thief, though. Even if I'm stealing to help people, now," _most of the time_ , she added silently, "I'm still a thief."

"I just… you have to tell me if I'm treating you like Archie used to, okay? If I'm treating you like the only thing about you that matters is your skills."

"Um… okay," she repeated, more firmly this time. "But, um… why? I'm the thief. It's what I do for the team. If you don't want me here for my skills, what am I here for?"

Nate just blinked at her, as though he didn't understand the question. Which, honestly, was fine, since she didn't understand half of what he had just been saying. Eventually he shook his head and muttered, "What are any of us here for, in the end?" Then he said, louder, "Just… never mind. I'm going to bed. Night, Parker."

She shrugged, putting the confusing interaction out of her mind, as he suggested, and focusing again on the vault door on the screen. "Night, Nate."

She was pretty sure he thought he was quiet enough not to be heard saying, "You deserved a home," as he hauled himself up the spiral staircase.


	33. After The Scheherazade Job

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After 03x04 (The Scheherazade Job)

Sophie and Alec

Alec's POV

* * *

It was late when she knocked on his door. She still looked perfectly put-together. He was in his comfy pants and pajama shirt. He had been killing time, dinking around with some old code, not doing much, just cleaning it up. Mindless stuff. Trying not to think about… about _that_.

It had been bad enough that Parker had refused to believe that he could play like that, when he was so high on goddamn _killing it_ , getting himself back to soloist condition in a matter of _days_ , after not having _touched_ a violin in _years_ , and then Nate had to pull the _fucking_ rug out from under him. Twice.

If hypnotizing someone without their knowledge wasn't conning your own team, he didn't know what was.

And then he'd had the goddamn _nerve_ to say that he, Alec, didn't have what it took to run his own team because he wasn't willing to pull shit like that on his own people!

Normally, he didn't have a problem with Nate, but sometimes he could be a world class dick.

In fact, the only person on the team whom he wasn't currently at least a little irritated with was Eliot, so he wasn't altogether pleased to see Sophie knocking at his door at half-past two, asking, "Can I come in?"

He should have said, 'no.'

He should have said, 'helping Nate con the team ain't any better than doin' it yourself.'

But she said, "Parker followed you out, and so did I," and he stepped out of the way, held the door for her like his Nana had taught him to do.

Nana definitely hadn't taught him that it was polite to sit on the couch, glaring at your guests until they explained themselves, but he did that, too.

"I'm sorry," she said, after a perfectly-timed, just-shy-of-too-long moment of silence. Then there was another beat. "I didn't know what he was doing until after he'd done it."

"You shoulda told me!" he exploded at her. "As soon as you knew, you shoulda told me! Keepin' this kin'a thing t' you'self's just as bad as lyin' about it outrigh'! It ain't _right_ , _Laura_." He put as much scorn as he could muster into the reminder of her habit of keeping secrets, twisting the word until her name sounded like the worst of insults.

" _Alec_ ," she said, her voice full of too-sincere-to-be-real remorse, and just a hint of condescending authority. "I'm not saying it was, I'm just saying that –"

"No, man, you don' get to defend this shit! You don' get to tell me how Nate wasn' really outta line, or how it was okay 'cause it needed to be done, and I was the _best candidate_. You knew, an' you didn' tell me. So maybe you can tell me this: how is this any differn' than that shit we pulled back inna beginnin' with that Order 23 guy? Or makin' Fuckin' Rand think Tara was psychic? It's all fuckin' mind games, man!"

Sophie sighed heavily, as though to say, ' _Are you done, yet?_ ' Then she repeated herself. "I'm not saying it was right, Alec. I'm just saying that it wasn't _fake_."

"The hell is that s'posta mean?" he muttered, glaring at her.

"It just means, well… everything that happened up on that stage was you. Alec Hardison. Not the hypnosis. Bloody hell, the _process_ of hypnosis only _works_ if _you_ want it to! Nate might have helped you remember what it felt like to play, helped you _focus_ , to _be less afraid_ , he walked you through reaching that mental state, but he didn't give you any skills. That's not how hypnosis _works._ That solo was all you, and you were _good_ , Alec. You were _amazing_."

Alec snorted.

"I'm serious!" she said, sounding offended.

"You didn' answer my question, though. How's this differen' from pullin' a job on a mark?"

She rolled her eyes. "I did, though. That _is_ the difference. When we play a mark, we're forcing him to believe a lie, forcing him to doubt the evidence of his senses or logic, manipulating him into doing something he doesn't want to do. I'm not saying I agree with what Nate did, but it was more like…" Her hands fluttered helplessly for a moment as she searched for the right word. "More like a placebo. You know, when a doctor gives you a sugar pill, and –"

"Yes! I _know_ what a placebo is, Sophie!" he snapped.

"Yes, well, it's like that. He asked you to forget that you had been hypnotized because you didn't need to think about it – it would have been counter-productive, drawing your attention to the very thing it was supposed to stop you thinking about. Like… like walking a tightrope, and looking down to remind yourself there's a safety net – it only makes you more likely to fall. He could have come up with a better way to tell you afterward, I'll admit, but it really was only 'cleaning out the cobwebs.'"

Alec felt himself weakening. Sophie was simply too good at this not-apologizing thing. No! He wasn't going to let her do it again! "You said you picked me out as the best candidate," he said, seizing on a reason to refuse to accept her oh-so-reasonable-sounding explanation – the reason he had been angry at her in the first place, as well as Nate and Parker.

"You want to know why?" she asked, with a tiny, wry grin.

"No! I wanna know how you can sit there and say you didn' _know_ when you were _in on it_ the whole time!"

Sophie sighed. "Alec, he asked me _ages_ ago. We weren't even on a job! I thought it was just a passing fancy. I didn't realize he'd picked up the skill until you were off practicing and he was faffing about with that metronome."

He scrutinized her expression, and couldn't, for the life of him, tell whether she was lying. _Damn it, Sophie!_ "A'ite, then, why me?" he asked, begrudgingly. Almost belligerently.

"You're the most empathic person on the team," she answered promptly. "You're also the most suited to focusing on sustained mental activities for extended periods of time, you're mentally flexible, and, well… you're the most trusting, out of all of us."

Alec snorted. "So – so not only am I not… not _ruthless_ enough, or whatever, to run my own crew, but I'm the one that trusts y'all, so I'm the one that gets tricked? _Figures_ ," he spat, still angry at the entire situation.

The grifter rolled her eyes. "If it was just about ruthlessness, _Parker_ would be running the team. It's about… identifying the skills your people bring to the table, and finding the right way to encourage them to apply them."

" _Manipulating them_ , you mean," he glared. "Us."

"Is it manipulating you when Parker asks you to make her a new ID? Is it manipulating Eliot when you ask him to cook dinner? Is it manipulating Nate when I convince him to go out with me instead of drinking himself stupid at the bar every night? _Every_ human interaction can be painted as manipulative, Alec, even if the only thing you're getting out of it is peace of mind."

"You – you actually think that makes it _better_? 'Sides, none of that's the same as fuckin' with my head – askin' someone to do somethin' – at least you got a choice!"

"It really is. Look: even if he didn't ask, even if he told you it was some kind of relaxation technique, or tricked you into following along, all that was just convincing _your_ mind to do the work of reaching the proper mindset. You _can't_ be hypnotized if you don't want to be, any more than Parker can _force_ you to help her."

That was it. Alec had had enough. "No."

"No?"

"No. I'm done. I ain' listenin' to any more of your bullshit, Sophie. Not tonight. Get out."

"Wha? But… I…"

If Alec hadn't been quite so angry, he would have been proud of himself. He had never seen Sophie speechless before.

"I'm done listenin' to you defend him. I'm done listenin' to you rationalizin' and tryin'a convince me this job was all on the up an' up, playin' good cop for him an' keepin' the peace." He stood and walked to the door, holding it open, pointedly.

She sighed, and rose gracefully, conceding defeat. "At least think about what I've said, won't you?" she asked as she walked out.

"Good _night_ , Sophie," he responded, and shut the door in her face, perhaps slightly harder than necessary. He had no intention whatsoever of thinking any more about her or Nate or fucking hypnotism. Not tonight.

But two hours later, when he still couldn't sleep, couldn't get her look of disappointment and her parting words out of his head, he retrieved his tablet from the bedside table, and started looking up hypnosis.

Dawn had just broken, and he was still reading, when he finally admitted that maybe, just _maybe_ , she'd had a point. All the articles said that all hypnosis was self-hypnosis.

But he was pretty sure Nate still owed him an apology.


	34. After the Double Blind Job

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After 03x05 (The Double Blind Job)

Sophie and Parker

Parker's POV

* * *

"Sophie! Sophie! Wake up!"

Sophie was not like Eliot, or Parker herself, jolting to consciousness in an instant.

"Parker?" she mumbled, rolling over to look at the clock, and groaning.

What didn't people get about thieves being nocturnal?

"I did what you said, but I messed it up."

She had. It was hours ago, now, but she had only just calmed down enough to come ask for help.

"What?"

"You told me I had to tell Hardison how I feel, but I'm not used to _feeling_ things, let alone talking about them, and I… I messed it up."

"What?" Sophie repeated.

"I got halfway through it and then… I couldn't do it. I said I've been having weird feelings for pretzels. _Pretzels_ , Sophie! Wake up, this is important! I don't know what to do!"

"Pretzels?"

"They were right there! I froze! It was like when I'm trying to grift and don't know what to say! He was looking at me with… with _eyes_ , and –"

"Parker, calm down," Sophie said, propping herself up against her headboard. Good. She was finally awake. "What did Hardison say after you told him you were having feelings for… pretzels?"

"He said they would be right there when I wanted some."

"Um… okay."

"They were. Right there. Like, literally. A basket of them. Pretzels."

"Parker…"

"Sophie, what do I _do_?"

The grifter groaned again. "First you're going to take a deep breath and count to ten, _silently_. And then I think we need to have a talk."

Parker breathed in, counted to ten, and then said, "What about? And why did I have to count to ten?"

"I was hoping it would help you calm down."

"Why would – never mind. What do we need to talk about?"

"We need to talk about exactly what you're feeling, so we can figure out what you want, and then what you need to do," the older woman said soothingly. This was much more calming than counting to ten. A plan. Parker could work with a plan.

"You said I was jealous," she volunteered.

"You were acting jealous, yes," Sophie agreed. "That feeling where you don't want him to spend time with other people, because that means he's not spending it with you? That's jealousy. Do you feel anything else about him?"

"Yes."

Sophie sighed. "What else do you feel about Hardison, Parker?"

This was a much harder question. "I… I like being around him?"

"What do you like about being around him?"

She hesitated, unable to articulate it. It was something about the way that he looked at her, like he wanted her there, no matter what. Like she made him happy, just by being there. That made her happy. But she didn't know how to say it.

"Let's start with something easier," Sophie suggested. "Do you like being around the rest of the team? Me? Eliot? Nate?"

Parker nodded.

"Why do you like being around me?"

"You teach me how to understand people," she said quickly.

"And Eliot?"

"He understands _me_. And he cooks."

"And Nate?"

"Nate plans jobs. He gives me things to _do_."

"Do you like being around Hardison for the same reasons you like being around the rest of us?"

Parker hesitated again. "No. Not really. No. It's different."

"How is it different?" Sophie asked, in the tone that said she was going extra slow, so she didn't scare Parker away.

"Because… because Hardison doesn't give me anything? And I want to spend time with him anyway?"

"So you enjoy his company, just for himself," Sophie said.

"Um… yes."

"Do you consider him a friend?"

"He said we were. Friends and team mates."

"What does that mean to you? Friendship."

"I… I… we talk? And watch movies? And do things that aren't work things, because we can, and they're fun?"

"Are you friends with anyone else?"

"Eliot. Peggy. Kind of."

"Okay…" Sophie said slowly. "Is your friendship with Hardison the same or different than with Eliot and Peggy?"

"They're all different." Eliot was Eliot. Peggy was Alice's friend.

"Hmmm…" the grifter hummed. "Do you find Hardison _attractive_ , in a way your other friends aren't?"

"What do you mean?"

" _You_ know, Parker."

"Um… no?"

"Do you want to touch him? Hold hands? Kiss him? Maybe have sex with him one day?"

"Is that important?"

"It could be, yes." Sarcasm.

"Um… maybe?" Sophie made a hand gesture that said _keep talking_. "I don't _not_ want to touch him. If he wanted to have sex with me, I would." Sophie made a funny face at that, but she didn't say what she was thinking, even when Parker paused, so she went on: "But I would have sex with Eliot, too. If he asked."

Sophie looked surprised. "What do you look for in a partner?" she asked.

That seemed like a rather abrupt change of topic. "Like… for a job?"

"No, Parker. Like a boyfriend."

"Oh. Um… I don't think I've ever had one."

"Are… have you ever slept with someone?"

She shook her head fiercely. "I don't sleep _with_ anyone." She would, occasionally, sleep _near_ someone, if they happened to be nearby when she wanted a nap, and she trusted them not to try to sneak up on her while she was sleeping, but not _with_ them, like in a bed, or anything.

"Have you ever had sex, Parker?" Sophie asked, in an exasperated tone.

" _Oh_. Yes. Of course. Why?"

"Do the people you've had sex with have anything in common?"

She wasn't counting the ones she'd had sex with when she didn't want to, she decided. She didn't like to think about them. She thought about the aerialist called Cherry, and the forager-thief she'd met in Barcelona instead. They had been the most fun. "Um… They wanted to have sex with me? They're nice to look at naked? Most of them are thieves, but not all… Most of them are men, but not all… um… I think they all spoke English? Oh, wait, except that man in Brazil…"

Sophie thumped the back of her head lightly against the headboard. "Okay, let's try a different tactic," she said. "You were jealous of Hardison when he started spending time with Ashley. Would you be jealous if Eliot was to spend time with other women?"

"No." Parker was quite sure of that.

"Why not?"

"Because Eliot spends time with lots of women. Hardison doesn't. He only spends time with the team, and his internet friends."

"So why didn't you want Hardison to spend time with Ashley?"

"Because he normally spends that time with _me_." Hadn't she said that was part of the jealousy thing? "We already covered this."

"Would you be angry with Hardison if he had sex with someone else, instead of you?"

Parker had to consider this for a moment, but she thought the answer was yes. She nodded slowly. "If he's having sex with anyone, it should be me. Or Eliot."

Sophie spluttered slightly at that. "Why Eliot?"

Parker shrugged. She thought it was obvious. "He already spends lots of time with Eliot, too."

"So you just don't want to lose his company to any degree, is that it?" Sophie asked.

"I guess so."

"Because you like spending time around him."

Parker nodded.

"Even though the only thing you get out of it is spending time together."

Parker nodded again.

"Do you want to spend _more_ time together than you already do?" There was a teasing lilt to that question.

Parker had to think about it. "Maybe. I guess it depends what we'd be doing. Not if it means I just sit around while he plays games with the internet friends. But yes if we got to do something fun."

"It sounds like what you want is a relationship."

"How is that different from friendship?" Parker had to ask.

Sophie had a far-away smile dancing around her lips. "I think all the best relationships are built on friendship. It's… closer, though. You grow together over time, and then you realize that your partner, your boyfriend, means more to you than anyone else. You realize that their happiness matters to you, maybe more than your own, even, enough that you'd sacrifice a little bit of yours for them, and they'd do the same for you, but it's not a bad thing, because seeing them happy makes you happy as well, and it's all worth it. Love. Sorry, I'm rambling."

Parker was watching the older woman closely. "Do you love Nate? Is he your boyfriend?"

Sophie's face went very, _very_ red. "No. No, Parker, he's not."

"Why not? You know each other better than any of the rest of us, and you spend a lot of time trying to make him happy."

"There's a certain lack of reciprocality between us in that regard, I'm afraid," the grifter said, with a look somewhere between sad and irritated. "But we're not talking about me, at the moment. The good news is, Hardison wants a relationship with you, too," she changed the subject back brightly.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, Parker. Very sure."

"How do you know?"

"Oh, I don't know... The way he watches you like you're the most fascinating person in the world? The way he's always suggesting you do things together, like watch movies or play games? He does, trust me."

Parker nodded. She did trust Sophie to tell her about normal people things. If she didn't, she wouldn't be here. "So what do I do about it?"

Sophie sighed. "Well, this is all very new to you. To both of you, I suspect. I think… you should take it slowly for the moment. Try spending a little more time together. Maybe arrange a few of those fun activities you mentioned, with just the two of you, like a date. I expect he'll do the same. Try to figure out exactly what it is you like about each other. Eventually you _are_ going to have to talk to each other about how you feel, though, you know."

The thief frowned. If she understood correctly, it sounded like they could do all of the relationship-things without any talking about it at all. "Why?"

" _Because_ , Parker, the key to a successful relationship is communication. Understanding. Making sure you're on the same page."

Parker took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. Okay. She could do this. "Okay," she said aloud. "But do you think he understood what I meant when I said _pretzels_?"


	35. After the Studio Job

AN: This one's been written for a long time, so if there are any inconsistencies with the last few chapters, that's why.

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(More) 2 AM Conversations

After 03x06 (The Studio Job)

Eliot and Parker Backstory/Team Bonding

Alternating POV

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At some point relatively soon after the team reconvened in Boston (over a year ago, now), Hardison had taken it into his head that Parker, who had missed out on ninety-nine percent of what Hardison (and everyone else) considered a normal childhood experience, needed to be educated. This had led (much to Eliot's dismay) to the introduction of the thief to cartoons, 90s pop music, and more 80s b-list movies than any of them cared to count. Eliot also blamed Hardison for giving Parker the idea to play Truth or Dare one night after they returned from a job, when she was too hyper to sleep. Both Nate and Sophie had begged off (Nate with the warning that they'd better not destroy the office (which he was still under the delusion was his apartment) with their dares), but neither of the younger men had been able to refuse the blonde's puppy-dog eyes.

Thankfully for Eliot's sanity, 'Truth or Dare' had devolved into 'Secrets or Shots' after it became very clear that neither he nor Hardison could think of a dare Parker would refuse, and they were likely to kill themselves trying to perform any dare she came up with. That was hours ago. Now Hardison was passed out on the sofa, Parker was still as awake and apparently sober as ever (he suspected she had been using some sort of slight of hand to vanish her vodka into the orange soda Hardison was using as a chaser), and he himself was slightly buzzed and ready to call it a night.

"I think I'm done," he said, finishing his own drink. "Why did you want to play this game in the first place?"

Parker shrugged. "It sounded like fun, especially when I thought there were going to be dares. And Sophie says that after two years, I should be comfortable letting you guys know more about me. And I got to find out things about you that I couldn't find out just snooping, so it was a fair trade." It would have been better if she had found a way to steal their secrets without trading them for hers (well, some of hers. She lied about others, because it wasn't any of Hardison's business what name her parents gave her, and Eliot didn't need to know about the real first time she had sex), but secrets were hard to steal if they weren't written down and you didn't know they were there. "Did you tell the truth?" she asked, curious to know whether any of the secrets she gathered meant anything, or if she should just forget about them.

"Of course I – Parker! Did you lie? Damnit! That's not how you play," Eliot sputtered.

Parker laughed at him. "It's more fun that way. Besides, I'm a thief. I don't play fair."

Eliot mentally smacked himself over the head for even thinking she would, and then again for thinking her awkwardness was about the questions themselves and not because she was lying. Then he was distracted from berating himself by the recollection that she had been a cat burglar since she was nine or ten years old, a subject he had been meaning to ask her about. _'I'm a thief'_ reminded him of it.

He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, well done. You stole my secrets." They hadn't been anything too personal, anyway. "How'd you get started as a thief, anyway?"

The crazy-girl smile that generally preceded a jump off a very tall building spread across her face before she said happily, "I stole my Bunny when I was six."

Eliot had to raise an eyebrow at that. "Didn't you say you started when you were nine or ten?"

Parker actually very much enjoyed talking about her thieving exploits (even the early jobs, before she was Parker), so it didn't bother her at all when Eliot continued to ask questions. She even answered them honestly, and volunteered a little more than he asked.

"I didn't start doing second-story work until a few years later," she clarified. "After I ran away the third time."

"Was that when you met Archie?"

"Nah, that was when I was with the street kids. Got picked up and sent to another foster family… ran away, got into a gang and worked as a getaway driver for a while, got sent to another family, escaped and boosted cars for a while in Detroit… got busted with a bait car, and after I got out of juvie I went back to mostly robbing rich folks' houses and picking pockets. When I was thirteen I cut my leg up, you saw the scar, and it got infected and I had to turn myself in 'cause I thought I was gonna die, but after that I escaped again, and maybe a year and a half after that I met Archie."

"So you were, what, fifteen?"

That was a boring question, which in Parker's mind meant it was time for her to ask one instead. "Yeah, something like that. It was '98, so yeah, I guess. Why? How did you get your start?"

"You know this, Parker," he said with a sigh. "I joined the Army straight outta high school, got put in Special Ops, did two tours before the Agency recruited me, did three years with them before they burned me, and then went solo." Oh. That was boring, too. She did already know all that. "An' as for why, I'm tryin' to decide how much I should be pissed at Archie for trainin' ya to be a thief, an' not takin' you home like his own kid." He scowled, and Parker couldn't help but laugh.

"None," she grinned.

"None what?" Eliot felt that he had definitely missed some part of whatever conversation was taking place in Parker's head.

"That's how angry you should be with Archie. None. I _wanted_ to be a thief. Well, I already was one. He just made me better. And besides, I wouldn't have fit in with his family any better than I did with the foster families."

Eliot was rather shocked by the vehemence with which she defended the old man. "Is that what he told you?" he asked as gently as he could.

Her smile vanished. " _No_ , it's what I saw for myself. They were happy. His wife and kids didn't know anything about him being a thief, and they didn't need me coming in and messing up their life."

That was, at least, consistent with what Leech had said, but… "That's not the point, Parker. What about you? You should have been taken care of. At fifteen a girl should be in school, getting' ready to learn to drive an' worryin' about if her crush thinks she's cute." That was how his sister's teenage years had gone, anyway. "Not, what? Set up in a warehouse somewhere learnin' to be a better thief."

"I had an apartment," she scowled, suddenly curled into a defensive ball, all knees and elbows and angry glares. "And I already knew how to drive," (Eliot snorted. Getaway driver before she was thirteen? Yeah, right.) "And if you weren't paying attention, I've been taking care of myself as long as you have."

Eliot winced at that – Parker was a good nine or ten years younger than him, so they would have started their careers about the same time, but while he had been an eighteen-year-old enlisting in an organization that told you exactly what to do and how to do it, she had been a nine-year-old serial runaway fending for herself on the streets of he didn't even know where. He had to admit, that probably counted for a lot more as far as learning to take care of yourself went.

"I didn't _want_ to go try to be part of another family or go to school," she continued. "I _wanted_ to be the best thief in the world. And you don't get to be pissed because he did exactly what I wanted. Meeting Archie was the best thing that ever happened to me."

The look on her face suggested that Eliot was about to get stabbed with a fork (or anything else relatively sharp that she might have to hand), and being a relatively intelligent man, he wisely decided to back off. "Alright, alright. It's none of my business."

"No, it's not."

"I just… We're more than a team, Parker. We take care of each other, now." Parker slowly started to relax. "An' it makes me mad to think that Archie wouldn't do the same for you, even though you'd take on a Steranko to take care of him an' his family."

"If it helps," she said in a small voice, "he was mad about that, too." She gave Eliot a wobbly smile. "He thinks Nate broke me, making me care about people."

This, possibly more than anything else, was infuriating to Eliot – that Parker's mentor actively encouraged her not to care about people, keeping her from relating to people even more effectively than shaping her into the perfect thief did. But he knew better than to say anything now, when she was just starting to relax. It must have taken him longer than he thought to master his rage (the next time he saw Archie Leech, the man was getting a piece of Eliot's mind, and if he didn't like what Eliot had to say, he could have a fist or two as well), because Parker interrupted his chain of thought.

"Did you mean it, when you said we're more than a team?"

"What? Yeah, of course."

"'Cause Hardison's said it before, and Sophie, but never you."

"Yeah, Parker, I meant it."

"So does this mean we're… friends?"

Eliot almost snorted. Family, more like, after two years working together in the field (not counting their little sabbaticals) and over a year of practically living together in Nate's pockets. They had saved each other's lives at least a couple dozen times. He had _voluntarily_ driven to the Grand Canyon and back with her, and _neither one of them had died at his hands_. "Yeah, Parker. Friends."

"Good," she said, with an air of finality. She had thought so. She had even told Sophie so, not too long ago. But it was good to know that Eliot was on the same page. She was practicing _communicating_.

Eliot stood to take their glasses and various half-eaten bags of chips and cereal to the kitchen. When he returned, she was gone, the door clicking shut quietly behind her. He tossed a blanket over Hardison, shaking his head. Still twenty pounds of crazy, but yeah, Lord help him, they were friends.


	36. After the Gone Fishin' Job

(More) 2 AM Conversations

After 03x07 (The Gone Fishin' Job)

Hardison and Parker

Alec's POV

* * *

It just figured that the one time Alec actually tried to go to bed at normal human hours, after a whole day of running around in the goddamn woods, he couldn't actually fall asleep. Not that he wasn't tired – he was exhausted – he just couldn't make his brain shut down. Normally that wasn't too much of a problem. He just worked or played games online until he couldn't physically keep his eyes open any longer. The problem was, the same issue that was keeping him up was making it impossible for him to concentrate on… anything.

His mind kept going back to running through the trees, dogs on his trail, men with guns hunting him down like a _goddamn_ animal.

It wasn't the first time he'd been held at gunpoint, and it surely wouldn't be the last, what with this crew, but he wasn't… _used_ to it. Before he joined the team, at _least_ eighty-five percent of all his criminal activity took place online – no fieldwork required.

He scratched idly at a mosquito bite – fucking _wilderness_ – he'd have to introduce Eliot to _virtual_ fishing, because there was no way in _hell_ he was going back out to the fucking woods – and reached for his phone with as little thought, scrolling through the contacts before he even realized what he was doing.

There were surprisingly few of them he could consider talking to about this. Nana and his foster-sibs were all right out. He loved them to pieces, but they didn't know about half the shit he got up to, and it was better that way. He could just imagine Nana's response to being woken up in the middle of the night to be told he'd nearly got himself killed by a bunch of redneck terrorists in the woods. He'd probably wish they _had_ got him by the time she was through with him.

Nate? No. Even if he wasn't completely trashed by this point, he was bound to be a patronizing asshole.

Sophie? Ha! Only if he felt like being psycho-analyzed to death.

Eliot had been there, so he should be the most understanding, but Alec knew without even calling that his response would probably be 'suck it up and go to sleep, Hardison!' He had lightened up over the course of the day (okay, once they finally got un-handcuffed – maybe he should take Parker up on that whole learning how to pick locks thing…), but he hadn't been altogether supportive of Alec's freak-out about the having to run for their fucking lives thing. Crazy Rambo motherfucker.

Parker? Maybe. He didn't like the idea of seeming weak in front of the girl he had his eye on, but then, it was _Parker_. She already probably thought he was a huge wimp for not liking jumping off buildings. And she had gone through something similar, running for her life against the Steranko at Wakefield, so she might get it. If nothing else, she would probably be up and willing to listen to him ramble. Hell, if he was really lucky, maybe they could also talk about "pretzels" – a topic she had avoided at all costs since the first time it was mentioned.

He mass-texted all of her numbers: _Hey, what are you doing?_

Surprisingly, it was her work phone she answered from – she normally ditched that one before going home, so he couldn't track her down. _Testing new harnesses._

 _Want to hang out?_ he sent back, then mentally kicked himself. She would probably take that literally.

Sure enough, ten seconds later he got a response: _Sure. Come over._

No address or anything, but then, he didn't really need one. When he reached the warehouse she had been living in a few weeks before, he realized why she had her phone with her – he already knew where this place was, and she clearly wasn't sleeping there anymore.

She let him in with a too-awake, too-cheerful grin, as though it wasn't the middle of the goddamn night. "Hi, Hardison!"

"Hey, Parker."

"Come on – I have one you can test. It's good you're here, because it will be different for you… you're so much taller, and your center of gravity is off compared to mine…"

He let her ramble, taking in the space. With all the lights on, instead of just the little island of light in a sea of creepy shadows, it was clear that there was an area for working on vault cracking – a whole series of half-disassembled safes and vault doors, and technology _he_ didn't even recognize; an area for testing rigs and harnesses, with a simulated "rooftop" that was only about twenty feet up, and heavy mats lining the ground beneath it; and what he guessed was an area for practicing airborne acrobatics – hanging hoops, ropes and chains, lengths of fabric falling from the rafters to the floor, a very shiny fireman's pole ( _Do_ not _think about Parker pole-dancing!_ he thought, failing miserably), and a lattice of free-standing scaffolding that hardly looked sturdy enough to support anyone, like the world's most insane jungle gym. The bed was gone, along with most of the "personal" stuff that had been in the center of the room – but most of that had been for the Wakefield job anyway, he was pretty sure.

"You're not listening," she said, in a faintly accusatory way.

"Huh? Wha'? Sorry…"

The thief sighed dramatically. "I _said_ you're not _listening_."

"No, no, I got that part." He wiped a hand over his face. "Sorry, Parker, it's just… it's been a long day. Can we just… sit, or something, and talk?"

She gave him a look that he couldn't interpret, but shrugged and led him to what he had been thinking of as the practice area. A few quick knots and the long silk banner (or part of it, at least) was doubling as a hammock-chair-thing, low enough to the ground for him to get into without hurting himself. By the time he did, she was hanging upside-down from her knees on the scaffolding.

"What did you want to talk about?"

Well, this was harder than he had expected. Partly because she was staring at him, which was not made any less uncomfortable by the fact that she was still inverted. "I dunno. Jus' didn' wanna be alone tonight, y'know?"

She shrugged, which just looked funny, and started swinging slightly. "No."

"You tellin' me you slept easy the night after Wakefield?"

"I don't usually sleep at night," she pointed out. "Besides, what does that have to do with anything?"

He let himself collapse back into the thin fabric, turning it into a cocoon around himself, rather than look at her as he answered. "Bein' hunted – people tryin'a kill you – not so differen' from them redneck bastards chasin' down me an' Eliot today."

The thief hesitated for a long moment before she said, "Um… I still don't get what that has to do with sleeping."

Alec sat up again to see her sitting cross-legged on the floor, much closer than she had been before, staring at him with unnerving intensity, as though he was some fascinating puzzle.

"I almost _died_ , Parker. People huntin' you like an animal, havin'a run for your life – I can' _sleep_ 'cause I can' stop _thinkin'_ about it. It's scary as – I don' even know, man. I never met someone who jus' plain wan'ed a' kill me before, when I ain' even done nothin' to 'em!"

"Well, you _did_ kind of threaten their money…"

"Dammit, that is _not_ the point!"

"Then, um… what is?"

 _Damn it, Parker!_ He almost wished that there was some malice in her tone, some reason he could legitimately be upset at her for not getting it, but her confusion was, as far as he could tell, genuine. And he had brought this on himself, coming over here, and then wanting to talk.

He marshalled his thoughts and attempted to explain. "I almos' died today. Not like someone holdin' a gun on me an' jus' like, 'stay still or I'll shoot,' an' I can just _stay still_ , but like, execution-style, ain't nothin' you can do, they' gonna pull the trigger. An' then they chased us – me an' Eliot – hunted us down like – like a gorram _deer_ or somethin', you know what I'm sayin'? An' Eliot, he' all like, 'I've done this before, Hardison, shut up and rub these smelly-ass leaves on yourself.' But I'm like, havin' flash-backs over here every time I close my eyes because ain' never been face to face with anyone who actually _wanted_ to kill me before, you know?"

"Um… no." Alec opened his mouth to say something – he didn't even know what – but before he could, Parker continued, a recognizable look of concern on her face. "Do you know how many times I've almost died?"

"Uh…"

"Eleven."

"Wakefield, um… Dubenich… when else?"

But Parker shook her head. "They don't count."

"They don' –? _Parker_ ," he said as sternly as he could. "That mad scientist blight lady and her pet security goon were _definitely_ going to kill you."

The blonde smirked. "The rest of security wasn't exactly going to shoot me in the middle of the hallway, though. I could have got out, but it would have been… messy. There are eleven times in my life where _I_ thought I was going to die. Dubenich, well… we figured it out in time. If I counted all the ones like that?" She made a little _pft_ sound, and shook her head again. "I've… I've spent most of my life on the run, and I was _ten_ the first time someone tried to kill me. Younger, if you wanna count hurting me and not caring if I died. You get used to it."

Alec decided he didn't want to touch the issue of how the crazy little thief thought she would have gotten out of Wakefield, 'messily' or otherwise. He was far more concerned with 'you get used to it.'

"You shouldn't _get used to_ people tryin'a kill you!"

Parker cocked her head to the side, visibly confused again. "It's not that big a deal, as long as they don't _actually_ kill you."

"Yes, it is!"

"Why?"

" _Because_ , Parker," he snapped without thinking. "It's _death_! It's someone trying to _kill you_. Wh – I don't even… Doesn't that _scare_ you?"

She shrugged. "It used to, a long time ago, but like I said, you get used to it. Now it's mostly just exciting."

Alec shivered. "Eliot's right about you: you' crazy, girl."

"Death happens to everyone eventually," she defended her perspective, her voice and face devoid of emotion. Then she grinned and added, "If you're not scared of dying, coming close is like jumping off a building or pulling off the perfect crime. Or both!"

" _Goddamn adrenaline junkie_ ," he muttered under his breath, trying to pretend her cool acceptance of death as… as a _thing_ didn't bother him. Clearly he had chosen the wrong person to talk to about this. Maybe he _should_ have called Sophie. She had almost been blown up a while back, hadn't she?

Parker didn't seem to be taking any notice of his muttering, though, because she was still talking. "Besides, you didn't like, _really_ almost die."

"What?! Mama, I beg to _differ_! Were you there? No, you were _not_! I think I get to say when I almost died, thank you very much!"

The thief just gave him an infuriatingly serene smile. "No, _I_ wasn't there, but Eliot _was_. He'd never let anyone kill you, not for real."

"Eliot's good, but…" There probably wasn't a good way to say 'but I don't trust him as much as you seem to, which is just _weird_ because you don't trust _anyone_.'

"Hardison," she said, at least as sternly as he had said her name when he pointed out that Hannity was going to kill her at Wakefield. "Eliot is _the_ _best._ Just because he doesn't kill people anymore doesn't mean he _can't_. It's easier to kill than to knock people out. If they got too close to _really_ almost killing you, he would have killed them first."

Alec swallowed his protests that he didn't want Eliot to kill anyone, and that Eliot didn't want to kill anyone anymore either, because there was something about Parker's pronouncement that had a ring of truth. Eliot was his friend and, at least on the job, his protector, as well as one of the most dangerous people in the world. Maybe she was right, and he hadn't really been that close to dying, even if he was sure he was still going to have nightmares about the whole experience.

Unexpectedly reassured, he elected to change the subject. "What do you do with all this stuff?" he asked. "The rings, and like, this thing?" he flicked the edge of his hammock-thing.

Parker's eyes practically glowed with excitement. "Want to see?"

He did, very much so. He could not, in fact, think of a better distraction from thoughts of death and killing than watching Parker demonstrate her ability to defy gravity in increasingly sexy ways. He enjoyed her silent, acrobatic performance far more than he suspected she knew, though given 'pretzels' he wasn't entirely sure. (And as much as he wanted to know what was up with that, he wasn't eager to interrupt the show for another heart-to-heart so soon after the unsettling talk of death.) She _might_ have been showing off for him. Maybe. He preferred to believe that she was, anyway.

He still wasn't eager to go to sleep when his mind finally started winding down, but he thought that, perhaps, if he was _very_ lucky, he would dream of impossibly flexible blonde thieves, and short, gruff-but-protective hitters looking out for him, instead of home-grown terrorists chasing him through the woods.

He certainly hoped so.


	37. After the Boost Job

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After 03x08 (The Boost Job)

Eliot and Parker

Eliot's POV

* * *

"Parker!" Eliot barked, as the blonde rose from the table and headed toward the door.

He had been biding his time for hours, chatting amiably with the others over spaghetti, bantering with Nate about the Charger (which was still his, no matter what the papers said – it was the principle of the thing, damn it!). Eventually Hardison had excused himself to fiddle around with his EMP canon. Eliot couldn't quite follow the engineering patter, but whatever he intended to do, he had obviously been very excited about it. Nate and Sophie had taken his departure as their signal to head home as well, leaving him alone with Parker. She seemed to have forgotten her earlier fuck-up and his wholly justified irritation with her in the wake of their final meeting with the client. Eliot hadn't seen even the _slightest_ indication that Nate planned to rebuke the thief for nearly getting him killed.

He would be willing to bet Sophie talked him out of it with some bullshit about not discouraging Parker from relating to other people.

Eliot, on the other hand, was more than willing to discourage their resident crazy person from random acts of kindness motivated by misguided empathy if it meant also discouraging her from _compromising the entire freaking mission_ and getting him _shot at and hit by a goddamn car_!

She froze, midway to the door. He watched her decide whether to run for it, and felt a surge of relief when she chose to stay. The conversation was only going to get harder the longer they left it, and she was perfectly capable of avoiding him for days if she didn't want to talk. She turned around without moving her feet, keeping her weight on the leg closest to the door, knee slightly bent, ready to spring away if he made any move in her direction, or if she simply grew too uncomfortable with the discussion.

He raised an eyebrow at her, very obviously remaining in place. He even crossed his legs at the ankle, out in front of him, under the table, impeding his ability to stand quickly. Just because she had made strides toward acting and communicating like a normal person under Sophie's tutelage didn't mean that she didn't still instinctively react like a skittish animal, especially when she was on edge.

"Eliot," she answered warily, relaxing slightly in response to his posture.

"You already know what I'm gonna say, Parker." He kept his voice even and low.

She still tensed.

"I'm sorry, okay?" she said, too quickly, throwing the words between them defensively. "I didn't mean to get you hit by a car!"

"Doesn't change the fact you did," he pointed out.

"I know." She wrapped her arms around herself tightly, still poised to flee. "I'm sorry."

That time she actually did sound sorry. Great. Step one down. He sighed, and resisted the urge to rub his eyes. "Look, Park… I can't just say 'fine, don't do it again,' here. You know why?"

She hung her head slightly, hunching her shoulders. "'Cos it's only been a couple months since Wakefield?"

Well. He hadn't even thought of that. "I was gonna say 'cause I ain't sure you know why you did it, an' if you don't know why you did it, you can't promise you won't do it again, but actually, yeah, that's a good point."

"I was just… I was just trying to do the right thing," she muttered. "Both times. Maybe Archie's right – Nate did break me."

Eliot growled slightly under his breath. Fucking _Archie_. And at the same time, fucking _Parker_ , because he couldn't be mad at her when she brought up her fucking awful past. Not without feeling like the world's biggest asshole, at least. If she could learn to manipulate people that effectively on purpose, she would rival… well, Nate, at least, as a grifter.

"You ain't broken, Parker," he grumbled. "It's… good, to want to do the right thing. But you gotta… ya gotta find some kinda balance. No more of this puttin' yourself an' your team at risk for other people, okay?"

She nodded and relaxed, coming back to the table. He waited. She wouldn't have sat back down if there wasn't something more she had to say. It took her a few minutes to work herself up to actually saying it, though.

"She reminded me of me," she said at last. "Josie. That's why I did it. I kept looking at her and seeing me, when I was with my crew up in Detroit. Is that weird?"

He shook his head sharply. "Nah. We all got history."

"I just… I just wanted to help her. I didn't want her to go down with the rest of that crew. I wanted her to… I wanted to tell her something I wish someone had told me, when I was her age," she said firmly, after a bit of wavering.

"I know." There wasn't really much more to say to that. Eliot let the silence stretch between them for a few seconds. "Would you have listened?"

"Listened to what?"

"If someone had told you those things you wish they had, when you were a kid. Would you have listened?"

She shrugged. "Maybe? Prob'ly not. I still felt like I had to try, though." She made a face that might have been disgust. "I don't like having feelings, Eliot!"

He laughed at that, and was almost surprised to hear a touch of bitterness to it. "It's easier to just be cold, isn't it? Empty? No emotions to compromise your objectivity, no morals makin' you second-guess yourself, no attachments 'cause it's safer that way…"

He was looking at his hands, scarred and stained with invisible blood, folded on the felt of the poker table, but he could see the thief shifting uncomfortably in his peripheral vision. "Do you miss it?" she asked suddenly. "The not-feeling?"

"Sometimes," he admitted. The word sounded gravelly as he said it. He cleared his throat. "It was… simpler."

"Me too," she nodded, looking utterly miserable. "I mean, other people make more sense now, a little, but _I'm_ confusing. I'm confusing to myself!" She made another face, frowning intensely at her knees, now pulled up between her chest and the table. "Sometimes I wish I could go back to the way I used to be," she admitted. "But I tried, and I can't. I'm too different now. I have been for a while. It's no fun just stealing anymore like I used to."

Eliot wasn't exactly sure what she meant by that: Was 'just' stealing no longer fun because it wasn't exciting enough just to outwit security systems and acquire a meaninglessly large amount of money I'd there wasn't a con aspect as well? Because it was more fulfilling to help people, like their clients? Because she had realized that her crimes hurt others, and she only wanted to steal from people who deserved it? Because she didn't want to work alone anymore? Was 'just stealing' her personal shorthand for a larger and more complex idea? He couldn't even guess.

He did know one thing, though.

"I wouldn't go back if I could," he said decisively. "It's good to be able to act that way if you have to. To know what you got inside you, if you're pushed to it. But it's no way to live, like some kind of machine, or a monster. It's the feeling that makes us human, Parker."

She sighed, resting her chin on her knees and staring of into space. "Being human is _hard_."

He raised the last of his beer toward her in a silent salute. _Don't I know it._


	38. After the Three Card Monte Job

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After 03x09 (The Three-Card Monte Job)

Sophie and Nate

Nate's POV

* * *

"Hello, Nate," Sophie said, sliding onto the bar-stool beside him.

"Soph," Nate answered tiredly.

"I'm proud of you, you know," she said, signaling for a drink. "I know this job can't have been easy for you."

He knew she knew, because she had made a point of bringing it up at every possible point along the way throughout the job. It had been incredibly irritating, because it _hadn't_ been difficult until they had been standing on the pier. Nate might not have been able to bring himself to kill the old man, but there was certainly no love lost between them.

So why did he still care about the fact that he had finally earned the tough old bastard's seal of approval?

The bartender placed a Gin Rickey in front of Sophie, and topped off Nate's whisky before she could dismiss him with a smile.

"Do you know, that was the only time he ever admitted he was proud of me? All I had to do was beat him at his own game and run him out of town." He laughed humorlessly. "Growing up it was always, 'you're weak.' 'Pansy.' 'Altar boy.' 'You're your mother's son, alright, boy!' And 'you'll never be good enough or smart enough or strong enough to follow in my footsteps.' And I was fine with that, you know, because I never _wanted_ to be like him. And now… what did he say? I'm better than him? More ruthless? Crueler? I never wanted to be that man, Sophie."

"Oh, Nate," she frowned at him, pity warring with some other emotion he couldn't quite pin down in her eyes. She laced her fingers through his own and squeezed. "You're not like him. He was – he was a bookie, and a loan shark. You help people. You don't take advantage of them when they're down. That makes a difference. All the difference in the world, really."

He snorted. That was what he kept telling himself, but… "Does it, though? All my life, I fought against becoming him, and from where I'm sitting, I've taken over the 'corner office.'"

She rolled her eyes at him. "Do stop being dramatic, Nathan. You know it does. Just because he's finally accepted you doesn't mean you're not still your mother's son as well, you know."

He spun his glass on the counter. "If my mother were still alive, she would... well, she wouldn't approve of the team. She'd say it's a matter of principle: the Devil doesn't do the Lord's work; a man can't do good by doing evil or right by doing wrong."

At that, the grifter smiled. "Don't tell me a one-time near-Jesuit doesn't have an answer for _that_. Besides, that's not the point, and you know it. Just because… just because you're using Jimmy's methods and you've earned the respect of the community like he did doesn't mean that you're not still a just man, a _good person_ , at heart. If there's anything I've learned in my life, it's that people are never all one thing or another." She dipped her head and caught his eyes, peering up at him through impossibly long lashes. He was suddenly very aware that her fingers were still entwined with his, almost protectively, as she held his gaze with an entirely earnest expression. Everything about her screamed 'I'm telling the truth,' and though he knew she was a liar, he couldn't help but believe it. She nodded slightly as she said, "We're _not_ bound to become our parents, you know."

He sighed. "I know that. I mean, look at you," he added with a sly smile. "Your parents aren't con artists, are they?"

She laughed, obviously recognizing his attempt to change the subject for what it was, but she allowed it to stand. He wasn't entirely sure she told the truth when she answered, though.

"No. My parents are perfectly average in every possible way. Dead boring, really."

"Are they still alive?" he asked. "Still living somewhere in England, believing you're an actress trying to make it big in the States, or something like that?"

"You're awfully curious tonight," she answered teasingly.

"Well, I don't know anything about your family, and now you know nearly everything there is to know about mine…" he allowed his observation to trail off expectantly.

It was with a slightly reproving air that she said, "I'm certain there's far more to know about your family, Nate, but," she sighed, "I suppose fair is fair. My mother was a beautician before she married my father. He worked in an art gallery. I expect he still does, unless he's retired by now. I haven't spoken to either of them in… oh, twenty-five years, now. I ran away when I was sixteen and never looked back." He examined her face closely, looking for any hint of dishonesty. He couldn't see any. In fact, she looked slightly irritated. "What?" she said sharply. "Have I got lipstick on my teeth or something?"

"No, no… I just… didn't think you'd tell me. Who are you, and what have you done with Sophie Devereaux?" he joked.

She shrugged, suddenly seeming unaccountably uncomfortable. "I don't know," she said, after a moment, in a poor imitation of her usual carefree tone. She seemed to realize that it hadn't worked, because she added in a much quieter and more serious voice, "I'm still trying to figure that bit out, you know."

If he was a better person, he supposed he might feel worse about having pulled her back from her soul-searching to clean up his mess all those months ago. As it was, he simply felt slightly awkward, as the conversation stalled between them – not that it had been particularly easy or lively to begin with.

Before he could think of something to say which wouldn't make the situation even more tense, she changed the subject again with a false-self-depreciating smile. "Look at us, a couple of sad sacks, just wasting away at the bar, moping all introspectively."

"Speak for yourself. I'm just getting drunk like any other Tuesday night." She laughed, so he considered the poor joke a success. "Why are you here, anyway?"

She flushed prettily, and finished her drink before she explained: "It was something Parker said, actually, about how she was glad you let him go, your father."

"Oh?" he raised an eyebrow. It had not escaped his notice over the past few months that the thief was becoming far more astute when it came to interacting with and interpreting the actions of the team and their marks. Hardison, too, had changed, making an effort to become more physically fit and capable in the wake of his adventure in the woods with Eliot, which had greatly improved his confidence – though that might also have had something to do with a little story Sophie had told him about 'pretzels.' (Eliot only became increasingly edgy as the threat of the Italian and the prospect of taking on Moreau loomed over the team.)

Sophie nodded. "She said she was glad you let him go, because she could never turn in Archie, and she didn't think you were the kind of person who could do that, either. Of course, she could have meant that she was pleased to have judged you accurately, but I prefer to think that she considers you someone to look up to, and is happy that your standards and hers aren't so different after all."

"Or she thinks that I'm finally thinking like a real thief," he suggested, rolling his eyes. "You know: it's one thing to ruin him and run him out of town, but completely different to hand him over to the police."

She huffed a laugh and rolled her eyes. "Possibly."

They fell into an amiable silence for several minutes as Nate contemplated the comparison and its source. "Do you know," he noted at last, "I think Leach might actually have been a _better_ father figure than my dad? How sad is that? I mean, at least Leach was supportive of Parker. He… kind of cared about her, I think. My dad was just a bastard through and through."

"Well, good riddance, then," Sophie declared.

Nate nodded and finished his own drink before making a suggestion. "What do you think about using Parker on the grift more?"

"Ooh, I don't know, Nate…" the con-woman hesitated.

He shrugged. "I'm asking because I know it'd be a lot of work for you, helping her, teaching her, but I think she could do it. Well," he amended, "if we started her off easy, with non-threatening marks."

"I'll think about it," she promised, as the bartender announced last call. "I'd better go, if I'm to get a cab."

"You could stay," he offered.

"Oh, Nate… I don't think that's a good idea," she replied smoothly, but she gave him a slow, lingering smile as she headed for the door. "I'll call you tomorrow and we can discuss that idea of yours and see if it still sounds as good when you're sober, how's that?"

She left before he could respond, and he couldn't quite determine whether she meant Parker grifting, or her staying the night. Tease.

He grinned. His father might have been right about Nate's having grown up to be more ruthless and crueler and better than his old man at his own game, but he was wrong about one thing: A woman who loved him but didn't understand him could never compare to one who understood him better than he knew himself, even if she hadn't quite admitted to loving him back (yet).


	39. After the Underground Job

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After 03x10 (The Underground Job)

Nate and Eliot

Eliot's POV

* * *

It's not a long drive to Boston from West Virginia as far as road trips go, but it takes a long time, because mountains and giant vans full of tech equipment simply do not mix well at high speeds.

Parker and Hardison had caught a quick flight back, supposedly so that Hardison could get a jump-start on tying up loose ends online from Headquarters, and because Parker was not allowed to drive Lucille. Eliot suspected that the hacker wanted a chance to get the thief alone to talk about their non-existent relationship. (He didn't necessarily think that trapping her on a plane to do so would work, but he looked forward to finding out.) He was almost certain that Sophie shared his suspicion, because he could think of no other reason that she would volunteer to help him and Nate bring the van back. She had taken a shift driving, but as the sun set she had decided to hand the wheel over to Eliot, and had quickly fallen asleep in the back. Nate had become his co-pilot more by accident than design, and if Eliot was honest, he was doing a piss-poor job of it. His primary job was to keep Eliot awake, and he hadn't said a word since they crossed the border into New York.

"Come on, man," he said, breaking the silence. "Talk to me about somethin'. Keep me awake."

Nate hummed slightly under his breath before he declared, "Alright, I've got something: what was up with you and that kid? Cody, was it?"

"Cory. Good kid. What about him?"

Nate shrugged in that way that meant his question really wasn't nearly as nonchalant as it seemed. "You seemed awfully invested in him for someone you only met a few days ago. He remind you of someone?"

Eliot frowned slightly. "A few someones. He's maybe sixteen, lyin' about his age an' puttin' in a man's work down there tryin'a do right by his mom an' sister. Smart kid. Hard worker. Coulda made somethin' of himself if his daddy didn't die in the explosion an' leave him the man of the house. Guess he still could, but it'll take a lot more luck than it woulda done if he'd been able to finish school. I knew a lotta kids like him, back in the day, had ta grow up to fast, ya know?"

"Yeah? What about you?"

"Nah. I never had to look out for anyone but me. To be honest, I ain't sure I coulda handled the responsibility. Cory… I dunno if he'll be able to handle it, either, long term. Thought he was gonna fall apart on me when he realized we were leavin'. But he's tryin', and that's a damn sight better'n a lotta grown men I've met." He chanced a look away from the road to see that Nate had a slightly goofy grin on his face. "What?!" he snapped.

"Nothing."

"Nate…" Eliot growled.

"Fine, fine," the older man laughed. "I was just wondering if you were going to keep in touch. Check up on him now and then."

Eliot shrugged. It wasn't like he hadn't thought of it. He kind of wanted to – make sure the kid at least got half a chance to have a decent life. But he knew he probably wouldn't. It wasn't his business. He'd already done what he could to give the kid a leg up without giving him a hand-out.

"You should think about it," Nate suggested. "Couldn't hurt."

The younger man had to laugh at that. "Nah, can't see that it would. Just can't see myself callin' him up an' checkin' in, either, though."

"Too bad. You could have been a good role-model for him."

Eliot had to look at Nate again to give him a look that said 'have you lost your goddamned mind?' because he couldn't think of anyone less suited to be a role model for _anyone_ than himself. Well, he had met some really awful people in his time, so that probably wasn't strictly true, but that didn't mean that he was qualified, in any case. Poster boy for bad life choices, more like. "Maybe _Eric_ would'a been a good role-model," he answered, referring to his miner character, "but in case you forgot, I ain't him. Not really."

He caught a hint of Nate's smile out of the corner of his eye. "I didn't forget. And I meant what I said. A kid would be lucky to have you in his life."

"Oh, yeah, Nate. I'm a thief. I beat the shit outta people for a living. I used to kill people. I'm exactly the kind of person you'd want in your kid's life." He winced as soon as he said it. He hadn't meant to bring up the subject of the older man's lost son, but now that he had, there was no going back.

Nate sighed heavily. There was a familiar old pain in his voice when he answered. "I would, you know. You're an honorable man, and smarter and… kinder than you let on. If Sam was still alive… I'd want you to meet him. I'd want you to look out for him. Keep him safe, if anything happened to me."

A silence nearly as heavy as Nate's sigh settled between them. Eliot let it sit for a moment, in recognition of how hard he knew that must have been for the mastermind to say. It was one thing to trust him with the team's safety, but to even consider that he might have trusted him with his family? It was a little amazing, he thought, to consider how far they had come since the older man had rebuffed his first attempt to offer his condolences.

"Thank you. That means a lot. I know… I mean… I'm sorry I never got to meet him."

He looked up in surprise as Nate clapped him on the shoulder, but once he did, he was unsurprised to see unshed tears in the older man's eyes.

"Me too, Eliot. Me too."


	40. After the Rashomon Job

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After 03x11 (The Rashomon Job)

Hardison and Eliot (mostly)

Alec's POV

* * *

Eliot caught up to Alec and Sophie only a few blocks from Headquarters, as Alec was silently debating whether it would be faster to call an Uber or try to steal a car. On the one hand, it was still hit or miss if he could even get the door to a given car open, but on the other, it was drunk-o'clock, so most taxis were probably in service already. Parker had declared that they were racing and immediately jacked an unattended motorcycle, so the dagger would probably be in her hands by the time he got to the museum regardless.

It seemed that Sophie had reached the same conclusion, because as soon as Eliot arrived she asked, "Is Nate coming?"

The hitter shrugged. "I think so. He'd'a had to lock up, though."

"I'll wait for him, then. Parker's going to beat us to the dagger, but we can still plan to take down Mr. Smarmy Mac Cares-a-lot.'" Both Alec and Eliot laughed at that, so hard that Alec nearly missed her adding, "I hate men like him."

"Me too, Sophie," he agreed.

Eliot nodded. "I'm gonna go back Parker up, though. Hardison, you in or out?"

"I'm in!" he answered immediately. "You think you could boost a car?"

"Do I look like Parker to you? No, I can't boost a car. 'Sides, it's only two an' a half miles to the museum, and it's a nice night. We can go on foot." Even though he phrased it like a suggestion, Alec was pretty sure it wasn't.

"Fine, whatever."

"You boys have fun," Sophie smirked, pulling off one of her heels and rubbing her foot.

"Nate should be here in a couple minutes, Soph," Eliot offered.

She rewarded him with a smile. "I may just head back and catch him up, then. See you tomorrow."

She put her shoe back on and turned around, walking back toward the bar.

"Should we be worried about her?" Alec asked, watching as she meandered toward the end of the block.

Eliot shrugged. "Nah. Everyone in this neighborhood that might think to mess with her knows who she is, an' she's not _that_ drunk. C'mon!"

And with that, he started jogging in the direction of the museum. Alec groaned, but followed. By the time Eliot stopped, what felt like ages later, he was about ready to pass out or throw up, or maybe both.

"Man," the hitter said, giving him a _look_ , "you're gettin' better at self defense, but you _gotta_ stop slackin' on your cardio. Runnin's your best option nine times outta ten, an' ya can't run for your life if ya can't run period."

Alec glared at the other man as best he could while gasping for breath. He barely seemed winded, and definitely hadn't even broken a sweat. "I – _hate_ – you."

Eliot had the temerity to _laugh_ at that. "No you don't. C'mon, keep movin'. We still got a little over half a mile to go."

By the time Alec had his breathing and heart-rate under control again, it was more like a quarter mile, and he was avoiding thinking about the necessity of adding more jogging to his exercise routine by thinking about the job, five years before, when they had all managed to come so close to meeting each other.

"It's kinda crazy to think we coulda met back in '05, if things'd gone just a lil' diff'ren'," he offered, wondering what their lives might have been like if they had met up for the first time back then. "Think we woulda still gotten together as a team?"

Eliot shrugged. "Prob'ly not. Nate wouldn'a for sure. You remember how he used to be. Or maybe you don't. Did he ever go after you?"

"Naw. I was hired to put in back doors in museum security a couple times, so he prolly knew my name, but I didn't know his before that job with Dubenich."

"Well, imagine all his," he waved his hands inarticulately.

"Magnificent Bastard, Xanatos Speed Chess Mastermind Mojo?" Alec suggested.

"I'm gonna pretend I know what that is…"

"It's how –"

" _Whatever_ , Hardison. Point is, it's all that, but sober, and focused on makin' sure he didn't have to pay for whatever you stole. He use'ta be a lot more like Sterling, before his kid died, is what I'm tryin'a say."

Alec winced. "Yeah. A'ite. So Nate woulda been out. What about you?"

Eliot shrugged again. "I mighta been up for workin' with Parker, but she was a solo act through an' through. I woulda turned you down in a hot second."

That wasn't exactly surprising, but still… "That hurts, man. It really does."

"Shut up, man. You grew on me, but that first job…" he shook his head.

"You said you liked Plan M," Alec recalled.

"I'd'a liked Plan M a lot more if I knew you were steppin' on my toes gettin' the dagger that night. You should count yourself lucky we didn't run into each other back then."

Alec snorted. The hitter had almost given him a tracheotomy that night, and he had been just an innocent bystander as far as Eliot was concerned. "Yeah, a'ite. So what about Sophie? Y'all seemed to be gettin' along real nice."

Eliot shook his head ruefully. "I can't believe I hit on her. She started it, though."

"Yeah, yeah, you stick to that story," Alec laughed. "So you woulda worked with her, or not?"

Eliot shrugged. "Maybe. Prob'ly not, though. I don't trust grifters as a rule."

Alec raised an eyebrow. "Sounds like there's a story, there."

"Nah. They just remind me of a time in my life I'd really rather not think about."

"They got a lotta grifters in Spec Ops?" Alec asked, surprised.

Eliot shook his head sharply. "CIA, an' they're in charge." Then he changed the subject. "She prob'ly woulda worked with you, though. Never met a grifter who wouldn't want a hacker backin' her up."

Alec nodded. "I set up online legends for a few ids for her, on commission back in '03. One a' the firs' jobs I got paid for. Didn' realize it was her until I was consolidatin' shit for the team, wipin' out traces an' ties back to us, y'know?"

Eliot did a double take.

Alec grinned. "Yeah, tha's right, I wasn' jus' some punk kid with a computer. I 'ad _connections_."

The older man laughed. "I met her, once, in Banho Zay, in '02. Didn't know it was her until we were talkin' during that first job. I'm guessin' she didn' recognize me, either. We were both goin' after the same mark, but different objects. An' I came face to face with Nate a couple times. Knocked him out once for pullin' a gun on me. You were the only one I didn't know, before."

"Yeah? How'd you know Parker?"

Eliot rolled his eyes. "Okay, I didn't really _know_ Parker, but I knew _of_ her. She pulled off that BASE jump from the Eiffel Tower when I was in San Lorenzo, an'she kept stealin' the Blue Diamond an' re-sellin' it. I've been hired to get it back three times now. Every time I do, she takes it again. I'm pretty sure she picked it up again after the Dubenich job, but before we really started the team. I haven't heard anything about it since, so either she hasn't moved it, or whoever bought it is bein' smart enough to keep their mouths shut."

"That's… that's ridiculous, man."

"It's _Parker_. You ask her."

"Ask me what?" a familiar voice asked from behind them as they finally approached the museum.

Alec jumped about a foot. (Eliot just smirked, the bastard.) "Don' _do_ tha' t' me, girl!"

Parker ignored him, of course, and tossed the dagger of Aqu'Abi in his general direction. He fumbled, having flashbacks to stealing the miniature David, but caught it. He tested it discretely to see if it wasn't another cheap fake, like the one Nate had broken all those years ago. "What did you want to ask me?"

"How many times've you stolen the Blue Diamond?" Eliot demanded, just as Alec asked, "How did you get this so fast?!"

Parker shrugged. "Eight. It's too pretty to stay locked up in a vault somewhere. And I've been planning this since I heard it was coming back." Alec was willing to bet that Eliot was giving her a _look_ just like he was, because she added, in the most exasperated tone he had ever heard, " _What_?! _You_ have your computer games, and _you_ have cooking. _This_ is what _I_ do!"

"Parker," Eliot said warningly, "Didn't we have a talk about moonlighting and solo jobs?"

She rolled her eyes and started walking back toward the bar. "Why do you think I brought it up tonight in the first place? You all were the ones who got distracted arguing over who stole it in '05."

Alec laughed as Eliot grumbled under his breath. "She' got a point, man. Hey! Hey, Parker! Wait up! You wanna boost us a car?"

"Why? It's not _that_ far. We'd have to ditch it at least a couple miles away from the bar to avoid suspicion, anyway. Besides, you walked here, didn't you?"

Now it was Eliot's turn to laugh as Alec grumbled, "Not by _choice,_ mama!"


	41. After the King George Job

(More) 2 AM Conversations

After 03x12 (The King George Job)

Hardison and Sophie

Sophie's POV

* * *

Sophie liked to think she ran if not a _better_ , then at least a more _supportive_ team than Nate. She had done her best in his absence not only to keep Leverage going, but also to teach and encourage the younger trio – Parker and Hardison, especially – to broaden their skill-sets. She thought it made her occasional demands that they do something entirely outside their comfort zones seem more like a challenge to meet than Nate's callous assumptions that they could and would do anything he deemed necessary, all reason and feasibility be damned. And on the occasions that she _did_ demand some nigh-impossible task of her people, she made a point of congratulating them on their success and thanking them for their efforts.

Parker never appreciated this, of course, and it had backfired spectacularly the last time she had tried to congratulate Hardison on Nate's behalf (after the whole hypnotism debacle), but she still thought it worth the time and trouble to track them down and let them know their work was noticed and recognized. Whether they knew it or not, thanking people was a well-established way of building connections, and team-members who knew that their contributions were appreciated were happier, more productive team-members. With Nate pushing hard to exploit their new tie to Moreau, they would need all the stability and productivity they could get. Not to mention, of course, that it was a matter of common courtesy to say thank-you when the occasion warranted it, and foraging a colonial-era diary from scratch in under forty-eight hours certainly qualified.

Thus it was that Sophie made her way to Hardison's penthouse apartment the day after they landed back in Boston. Eliot had finally insisted that they needed a day off, in the face of Nate's manic insistence that they begin work on the Federal Witness Job right away, and Hardison's unwavering willingness to do so, despite not having slept more than ten hours collectively over the duration of their jaunt to London. The poor boy had been nearly dead on his feet – so much so that he had not even complained when the hitter insisted that he be escorted to his own home, rather than simply crashing on Nate's sofa for a few hours – though that might, the grifter would concede, have been due to the fact that Parker had been enlisted to help him off to bed, rather than because he recognized the necessity of a good night's sleep.

She rang the bell, and on hearing no movement on the other side of the door aside from the scrabble of his dog's paws on the tile, knocked patiently. So far as she knew, the youngest member of the team had arrived home nearly sixteen hours before. Knowing as she did the preferred sleep schedules of her teammates, she had waited until well after noon to make her way across the city, and it was now nearing two o'clock. If he wasn't up yet, he really should be.

When she grew bored of waiting, she set to picking the lock. While she would never, she suspected, be as quick at this sort of thing as Parker, she had had a life before meeting the blonde thief, and an ability to let oneself into places one really oughtn't to be was nearly as valuable a skill to a grifter as a burglar.

After consoling the anxious Megabyte (a recently-acquired, slightly-neurotic pomsky that Parker had come to accept only because he was clearly more terrified of her than she was of him, and, in her words, resembled a stuffed animal more than an actual dog), she knocked gently on Hardison's bedroom door.

"Hardison?"

"Hmm – wassat?"

"Hardison, it's Sophie."

"Soph? Wha'time's'it?" the hacker mumbled, from the sound of it, into his pillow.

She smiled softly. "It's just gone two, Alec. Time to get up."

He moaned something that might have been a rather indistinct 'five more minutes.'

She laughed and cracked the door open. "Go get him, puppy," she whispered, urging the small, excitable dog into the room as she headed toward the kitchen to make tea.

Hardison appeared nearly ten minutes later, clad only in pajama bottoms, rubbing sleep from his eyes and making a face as he felt the stubble on his cheeks. "Mornin', Soph," he muttered, taking the cup she offered and making a face when he realized how little sugar she had added to it.

"Afternoon," she corrected.

He nodded. "Yeah, that."

"Someone seems to have left muffins for you," she noted, pointing at a plastic-wrapped plate.

"Gloria's a saint," he sighed, though he made a face on biting into one before looking at the note tucked under the edge of it. "Zucchini-apple chocolate chip?" he read in a tone somewhere between disbelief and betrayal.

"Ooh, gimme," Sophie demanded, fluttering her fingers for a muffin, which he obligingly passed across the kitchen bar. It was very good, though admittedly she understood why the man would have been taken aback, if he hadn't been expecting zucchini bread. "So tell me about this Gloria," she suggested teasingly as he fished around in his fridge for a bottle of orange soda. "I thought you and Parker…"

He snorted. "I wish. Glory's my dog-sitter, the kid from 3B. She's like, fifteen, sixteen. I let her crash up here when I'm gone as long as she cleans up after herself." He yawned broadly. "Not that I don't like to see you, but what's up? I though' we had the day off?"

She shrugged. "We do. I just thought I'd come by and let you know how impressed I was by your work in London. You really could have had a career as a forager, you know. And I appreciate the effort and the artistry it took for you to accomplish it so quickly."

"Thanks, Sophie," he answered with only the slightest hint of awkwardness, which matched his self-satisfied but slightly bashful expression. He really wasn't recognized enough for his contributions, Sophie thought, regardless of the fact that he had made a habit of pointing out exactly how brilliant he was to the rest of the team.

She grinned. "There's no need to thank _me_. This job… we couldn't have taken Keller down without you, so really, I should be thanking _you_."

He peered curiously at her from the other side of the bar. "Yeah, I noticed that this job was really getting' to you. Was it just that London's your home turf?"

She sighed. She supposed she should have expected this line of questioning from Hardison. Eliot wouldn't care, and Parker probably wouldn't notice, but Hardison did pay attention to people, and cared enough to ask when he saw something amiss. In her defense, she had thought him too preoccupied to realize that she had been in a state since she had seen that little girl detained. "It's… partially that," she admitted honestly, before adding, somewhat reluctantly, "but more… what do you know about what I used to do, before Leverage, I mean?"

He scratched his head and touched his chin lightly, obviously thinking of the research she knew he _had_ to have done on her previous exploits. "Sophie Devereaux shows up for the first time in reports from France in… 1991, and then pops up all over the world for a couple decades like Carmen Sandiego. Art thievery and fraud, mostly. Annie Croy started earlier, '85, right?" Sophie nodded. "Some links to organized crime, mostly as a fence, lots of connections in smuggling and the black market. I think all the other aliases you gave me to check up on were more recent, more art theft. Well, art and artifacts. I haven't had a chance to look into Charlotte Prentice, yet."

The grifter smirked. "You won't find anything on her," she said with a certainty carefully calibrated to hide the spike of regret that still plagued her when she thought of William and the life they could have had together, if only she could have brought herself to tell him the truth (and if only he would have forgiven her the lies). "I never did get around to using Charlotte for the game I had intended."

He raised an eyebrow at her, but she declined to volunteer more information. "So why'd this one get to you?" he asked after a moment.

She twisted her face into a rueful expression. "I… you know most of my marks were high-society gents, the sort of rich wankers who could afford the loss. Some of them probably considered it worth it, for the thrill and the story of being taken for a ride. I don't have any regrets about conning _them_. But… I don't have any guarantee that the fences and smugglers I used were any better than Keller. Some of them I know were just as bad. And I haven't used any of them in years – decades, even, but… I just feel guilty, I suppose, for ever having contributed to that sort of thing."

Hardison hummed slightly, picking at his muffin. "You know," he said after a time, "that ain't the worst thing anyone on the team's ever done. Not by a long shot."

"Are you hiding some deep, dark, tragic past?" she joked, smirking gently at him.

He smiled sadly. "No. But Eliot is. And some of the jobs we've pulled as a team… just didn' sit right with me, y'know? There's always _some_ kind of collateral damage. But… I can live with that because we're helping people. If that means that people lose their life's savings when the stock for a company we ruin goes down, or they lose their jobs because we fooled them or stole their identities or whatever… I try to think of it as the cost of correcting a corrupt system. Not our fault, you know? Or not _only_ our fault. Part of it's a product of like, a paradigm shift. Some people have to lose out, because knowingly or not, they were contributing to supporting a bad _status quo_."

Sophie frowned, more gently than she really wanted to, given that she hadn't really given much thought to the consequences of their jobs before. "I'm not really sure what you're trying to say," she said, because quite frankly, she couldn't see any way in which pointing out that Leverage had resulted in just as much collateral damage as her earlier jobs might have done, was intended to make her feel better.

He shrugged. "Me either. It's early." She raised an eyebrow at him, and looked pointedly at the clock. He rolled his eyes "Hey, I've only been up for like, half an hour. I'm just sayin'… maybe it's just… unavoidable, hurting people sometimes. Even like, normal people, citizens, they might hurt people without knowing it, like working for JRP or Wakefield. But what we do now… it's better than just… bein' ignorant an' goin' after whatever you want, whether that's stealin' art or earnin' a paycheck. It helps more people than it hurts, in the long run, Leverage."

"You really believe that?" Sophie asked, giving him a skeptical look.

He smirked. "Yeah. I do, actually. Anyway, it definitely helps more people than ripping off rich old geezers and publically insured banks. We're changin' the world, if you think about it right."

The grifter thought that was either the wisest or most naïve thing she had ever heard the hacker say. Possibly both. She gave him a genuine smile. "Well, then, here's to helping people and changing the world," she laughed, lifting her teacup in a false toast. He tipped his soda bottle toward her in response, then watched in bemusement as she shrugged on her jacket and slung her purse over her shoulder.

"I'll see you tomorrow," she said, by way of farewell.

"Yeah, see you tomorrow," he nodded, covering a yawn with one hand.

She turned back at the door with a smile and said again, "And Hardision? Thank you."

There was no hint of hesitation in his, "You're welcome," this time, though he sounded, if anything, more surprised than he had earlier. She wondered idly if he realized why she was thanking him as she headed toward the elevator. She rather thought he might.


	42. After the Morning After Job

(More) 2AM Conversations

After 03x13 (The Morning After Job)

Hardison and Nate

Nate's POV

* * *

It was late when Nate finally returned to his apartment after toasting their victory with Sophie – a drink which had, of course, been followed by several others. For the first time since the Italian had appeared in his life, he felt like they were very nearly on top of the situation again, and gaining ground fast, which was indeed something to celebrate.

The hacker was still working, sitting at the table with computers set up all around him, a slew of printed documents collapsing to the floor from a pile on the chair to his left. He peered over the younger man's shoulder to see a bewildering wall of code computing on one laptop screen, and no fewer than six overlapping windows open across two others. The ever-present bottle of orange soda was nearly empty, and a half-eaten box of Thai takeout attested that he hadn't moved since Nate had left him five hours before.

"Can I _help_ you?" Hardison asked waspishly, turning to glare at him.

Nate did a double take at his tone, humming in a vaguely curious way. "No, just looking."

The young man snorted, turning his glare back to his screens before fishing a legal-sized sheet of paper covered with arrows and abbreviated bank account numbers from the pile on the floor and adding several more notes, an arrow from 'VE77_4948-2' to 'Trebol Ltd. CH93_7864-5,' and one from that box to a circle (Moreau? SX32_9990-1).

"Seriously, Nate, what do you want?" he snapped, tossing the complicated map of transfers back onto the chair. "'Cos you're drunk and I'm a _li'l_ busy right now!"

The older man raised his hands placatingly, taking a step back. Hardison gave him a hard stare for a moment before turning back to his monitors with a huff.

"What was that?" Nate found himself asking.

"What?"

"That – that _huff_."

Hardison looked at him long enough to roll his eyes, but didn't answer, turning back to his screens and his data with an expression of outright _disgust_.

" _What?_ " Nate insisted, searching his memory for anything he might have done to anger the younger man. "Did I… Is this because I took the night off, or…? Because this _is_ still my apartment…" _little though it seems so lately_ , he added silently, eyeing the hastily covered bullet holes in the windows and the door, the empty shelves and tables that had once held various knick-knacks and books.

The hacker glared at him, then hesitated before saying: "No, it's not. I mean, yeah, it's a _li'l_ irritating, seein' you kickin' back an' spending the night drinking when _I_ have to work, but naw, I get it – can't do anything until I get this done, but… it's…"

" _What_?" Nate asked again, rather more impatiently.

"You can't kill Parker, okay?" the younger man said in a rush.

"What?" Now he was just confused. "Parker?"

"She – you – she looked _dead_ , man," Hardison said, with a self-conscious little shrug.

Nate blinked at him. "You know that was the _point_ …?"

"Goddamnit, yes, I know that was the point. And before you say it, yeah, I know she didn't mind, she already tol' me it was the easiest grift she's ever done. But… I just couldn't stand seeing her, lying there, looking… dead."

"Um…" Nate didn't often find himself at a complete loss for words, but in this case, he could not for the life of him think of anything to say.

Hardison sighed. "Look, I know, it's dumb, but… just can we please not kill Parker from now on? I mean, girl scares me half to death all the time. I don' really need to see what it'd look like if…"

Nate bit his tongue on the celebratory alcohol he had drunk and the first comment that came to mind: that if one of Parker's rigs failed, she almost certainly wouldn't be having an open-casket funeral. But that made him think of Sophie's funeral, and the sight of her lying there, having just come so close to death after that bomb… they really did go through apartments, he thought, eyeing the bullet holes again. But in any case, he thought he understood, at least a little.

Eventually he nodded. "I'll file killing Parker with Plan M," he offered, with a slightly rueful smile, hoping that reminding the younger man of the now well-established inside joke would help lighten the mood.

It worked, or so he thought. It could have been his promise, rather than the reference, but the tension seeped out of Hardison's shoulders and he nodded. "Thanks," he answered, his tone only slightly grudging. Or that might have been Nate reading too much into it, because after a second he followed it with: "I just… I don't want to even think about... y'know?"

Nate nodded, moving close enough to clap his shoulder. "I… yeah."

The conversation subsided awkwardly as Hardison, apparently embarrassed, turned back to his work, and Nate tried to decide whether to comment further on the younger man's crush on their resident thief. Unable to think of anything to say, however, he eventually decided against it. The hacker had work to do, and there was nothing to say about Parker other than 'you've got it bad,' which was patently obvious, and likely to be unappreciated.

Instead he excused himself, muttering something about bed as he drifted toward the stairs. Hardison looked up long enough to wish him a dismissive (and possibly passive aggressive?) good night. (He wasn't quite sure he believed the kid was fine with pulling yet another all-nighter while everyone else had the night off.)

He did head to bed, though once there, sleep eluded him. Intra-team relationships were the furthest thing from his mind: As soon as Hardison could give him the outline of Moreau's financials and the extrapolated picture of his organization, he could start planning. This was going to be a good one, he could feel it. He hadn't forgotten his promise to Eliot: not only was he going to find a way to take out Moreau, the Italian was going down, and if there was anyone on this side of the Atlantic who doubted their ability to take out anyone who decided to fuck with the Leverage crew when he was done with _that_ particular pair, well… they would learn their lesson in time. But Nate really didn't think that would be a problem: when this job was finally done, they really _would_ be good, as well as back, and everyone would know it.


End file.
